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Internet Marketing Textbook PDF
Internet Marketing Textbook PDF
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION TO
INTERNET MARKETING
Key concepts
What is internet marketing, history and pioneers of internet marketing, today’s internet
marketing context, with a specific focus on the South African landscape, future trends,
how the tactics taught in this textbook fit together.
CHAPTER 1:
InTRoducTion To
inTERnET mARkETing
1. Introduction
Internet marketing is the fastest growing and most exciting branch of marketing
today. As the world becomes ever more connected, keeping up with developments
and trends is vital for marketers trying to reach new audiences – who are more
discerning, fragmented and cynical than ever. Technology and software are
changing at such a high rate that it seems almost impossible to keep up with
trends. Products and services are evolving and adapting to the online sphere. The
web is constantly shifting, growing and changing – everything is fleeting.
How do savvy internet marketers cope with all this? They harness the power
of the web – and its myriad tools – for their own needs. They find unique and
personal ways to interact with customers online. They plan, organise, implement
and measure complex internet-wide strategies seamlessly. Most importantly, they
never stop learning, growing and adapting themselves.
• Explore today’s internet marketing context, with a special focus on the South
African space (section 4)
• Discover how all the tactics taught in this course fit together (section 6)
any marketing activity that is conducted online through the use of internet
technologies. It comprises not only advertising that is shown on websites, but
also other kinds of online activities like email and social networking. Every aspect
of internet marketing is digital, meaning that it is electronic information that is
transmitted on a computer or similar device, though naturally it can tie in with
traditional offline advertising and sales too.
1. Immediacy. The web changes at a blistering pace and online audiences, whose
attention spans are short, expect on-the-minute updates and information.
To keep the favour and attention of this group, you must respond to online
messages and interact with communities as quickly as possible.
Throughout this course, you will learn tips and techniques for making all your
online communication more immediate, personal and relevant.
non-commercial arena. Eventually, however, the businesses won out and the last
of these restrictions were dissolved in 1995.
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Figure 1: The first email ever was sent between these two computers.
(Source: history-computer.com)
Early internet giants like Yahoo and Amazon launched their online platforms in
the mid-1990s amid a wave of new search portals, including Alta Vista, Excite
and Infoseek. Google launched in 1998, taking search to a new level of accuracy
and convenience. Other commercial websites, like the auction site eBay, began to
dominate the web, solidifying the interactive and global commercial potential of
the internet.
In 2004, the concept of “web 2.0” – the interactive, commercial, cooperative and
user-centric web – exploded into public consciousness. Its main characteristics
were the rise of social networking, the invention of tools that made creating
and customising personal pages increasingly simple, and the big push by online
marketers to make their advertising and products more accessible and desirable
to online markets. Commercial strategies have become more prevalent and
innovative since then. Recent years have seen a growth in web consciousness as
users become more adept at filtering and steering online content.
In December 1995, the internet had 16 million users, which equated to about
0.4% of the world’s total population. It surpassed 100 million users in early 1998
and continued to grow exponentially since then. The 1 billionth user joined in
December 2005. According to Internet World Stats, there were 2 billion users
online by June 2010 – that’s 30% of the world’s population.
Websites first
The first marketing activity online started in the early 1990s with the creation of
Figure 2: The first banner advert in the world, run on HotWired by AT&T.
(Source: www.netlingo.com/word/ad-banner.php)
Online search portal Yahoo capitalised on this trend and offered advertising space
on its massively popular home page, quickly developing extra software for tracking
user preferences so it could target the advertising more effectively; it became
one of the few “dotcom” companies to earn a tidy profit from online advertising.
Google took the idea, streamlined it and improved the advert-targeting algorithms.
In 2000, it introduced AdWords, an advertising service that allowed marketers to
pay only for adverts that were clicked on by a customer. The strategy, which
accounts for 95% of Google’s current revenue, became phenomenally successful
and is now the benchmark search engine advertising method.
Figure 3: A graph illustrating the dotcom boom in the late 1990s, followed by
the market crash in 2000 and 2001.
(Source: weblog.blogads.com)
The last and most profound change to the marketing space was the rise of social
media, which was gradual from 2004 and meteoric from 2006. Social media
platforms, such as social networking sites, opened the space for user-filtered
and recommended content – including marketing material. As the social media
platforms grew and people created exponentially more connections with each
other, the vision of viral marketing – the online equivalent of word of mouth
– became real. On the other hand, it made the necessity for online reputation
management clear, a lesson that computer company Dell learned the hard way
during the infamous “Dell hell” scandal in 2005.
Dell received a series of complaints after it had changed some of its products and
services, and one disgruntled blogger, Jeff Jarvis, vented his frustration on his
well-known blog. Other voices joined the online outcry, sharing stories and linking
blog posts and articles. Dell ignored the issue completely and remained silent in
response to complaints, but the mainstream media picked up on it and catapulted
it into public view. What followed was a two-year assault on the reputation of Dell,
which had reacted too slowly and unsatisfactorily to the negative online buzz.
The situation led to extremely negative publicity, substantial losses in sales and
plummeting long-term public perception. You can read some of Jarvis’ posts at
www.buzzmachine.com/tag/dell/page/7/.
The signature was attached to emails that went out, sent by users at no extra cost
to themselves or the company, and the message benefitted from the perception
of peer recommendation – if a colleague or friend was using and promoting the
service, it must be worthwhile. A year later, in December 1997, Hotmail had
8.5 million subscribers, and it continued to grow, surpassing 12 million in 1998.
Considering that there were an estimated 70 million web users in December 1997,
Hotmail held well over 10% of the market. The company was sold to Microsoft
eighteen months after launch for $400 million. This remains one of the simplest,
smartest and most effective marketing strategies of the early web.
(Source: Google)
The turning point for the company came in 2000 when Google launched its AdWords
service, a means by which marketers could bid on certain search keywords so that
their adverts appeared on search results when a user entered those keywords. As
the AdWords were auctioned off, Google’s revenue shot through the roof. The
simple and innovative system matched web searchers and advertised content
more accurately than ever before, saving marketers money and time. AdWords is
still Google’s highest-earning product.
movie itself, released in 1999, was filmed on a small budget and was never intended
for wide mainstream release. However, the creators had the idea of promoting
their film to potential investors online and built a website for it. Through word
of mouth facilitated by online channels, the site’s popularity grew and started
attracting new visitors.
Its biggest appeal was the wealth of interactive content related to the legend and
the film, both of which were entering the public consciousness. This included not
only videos and sounds from the film, but also fabricated news stories, photos,
biographies and accounts of the imagined events, all of which tied in to form a
coherent and fascinating narrative. Have a look at the page on www.blairwitch.
com. The website had over 10 million page views in the week that the film was
released, and the average time spent on the site per person was an unprecedented
16 minutes. It also ensured that the film got a wide release and netted over $250
million worldwide.
(Source: bcdcideas.wordpress.com)
Fans became very engaged with the content and it spread virally from District 9’s
website, Facebook Page and Twitter account around the world. The real effect
was seen after the opening of the film. Viewers enjoyed the film so much that they
commented widely online to encourage others to view it – the film even became
a trending topic (one of the most-mentioned topics) on Twitter for several days
afterwards. In the end, the movie far eclipsed its humble $30 million budget and
became a worldwide phenomenon. See a detailed analysis and all of the videos
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here: digital-marketeer.com/2009/06/24/district-9-movie-experience-viral-and-
online-strategy.
• Social media marketing. Whether it is a fad or here to stay, social media has
made an indelible mark on the web landscape and, concurrently, on marketing
tactics. Social media marketing involves using peer recommendations, sharing,
building brand personality and addressing the market as a heterogeneous
group of individuals. It also uniquely encourages customers to create content
and buzz around a product themselves.
• Brand as product. More than ever before, brands are creating personas and
identities around themselves rather than the products they sell. The online
space allows customers to interact and converse with the brand personally
and directly.
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• Ad fatigue. Web users have become very familiar with online advertising and
have learned to tune it out – or have even installed programs like AdBlock
Plus to block it altogether. Marketers today have to think of very innovative
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• Golden oldies. Despite all the exciting new strategies, email and website
marketing remain among the most useful and effective techniques. These
strategies do, of course, use new tools and tactics (like advanced tracking,
integration with social networks and customer-generated content), but their
essence stays the same.
Refer back to this list in the future and see how much has changed – chances are,
many of these strategies will sound outdated in a few years.
(Source: www.internetworldstats.com)
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South African internet usage has more than doubled between 2000 and 2009,
currently sitting at 6.8 million people (or close to 14% of the population).
Accelerating growth started around 2007, when connectivity prices began to
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drop and service providers started competing in earnest to get a share of the
relatively small market. The government’s growing appreciation for the value of
improved IT infrastructure is leading to the gradual growth and availability of new
services at lower rates; however, this process has been slow.
Many are also turning to local alternatives and locally relevant websites to start
conversations and interact in uniquely South African ways. This is already becoming
evident. One month before the start of the 2010 World Cup, the word “vuvuzela”
became a trending topic on Twitter because of an impromptu vuvuzela-blowing
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event organised online. This trend was started locally and remained high on the
list throughout the month-long event. Another example is the “Don’t touch me on
my studio” meme that originated from a rowdy TV interview with an AWB leader;
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the phrase spread quickly online and leaked over into popular culture, becoming a
staple of jokes and conversations. You can read more about this at www.timeslive.
co.za/local/article393927.ece/Dont-touch-me-on-my-studio-.
2. Web users expect the highest convenience and information at their fingertips.
All companies need a website as their central point of contact. If your details
don’t come up in a web search, you will be ignored.
3. Customers are fickle. They will not expend a lot of energy to find you online.
Even worse, if your competitor is easy to find online, your potential customers
will happily turn to them.
4. Since South Africans are using, socialising and buying on the web – and
especially because current advertising spend is still very low – now is an
excellent time to move your marketing into the online sphere and capitalise
on a new and connected audience.
5. Audiences want to interact with and converse about your brand and products.
Give them the opportunity to do it in a mediated space, and become part of
the discussion.
6. Online marketing is almost always cheaper and more targeted than traditional.
You can reach the best customers at the lowest price.
When done smartly, your online marketing plan will integrate seamlessly with your
traditional tactics, won’t cost a fortune and will expose you to a market that you
had previously been invisible to.
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risks in mind.
• Relatively few people are online, and those who are usually have limited data
and slow connections. Anything that you put online has to be accessible to
the lowest common denominator.
• Many South Africans browse the web on their cellphones. Keep your marketing
mobile friendly whenever possible.
• South Africans are cautious browsers – they are very unlikely to make impulse
purchase decisions or to trust a new brand or product that they find online.
• Basic computer skills are generally quite limited, so online content has to be
clear and easy to use; otherwise, customers will simply give up.
• You need to adhere to legal and ethical codes of conduct – not doing so
can lead to harm to your brand image at best, or severe legal sanctions at
worst. Make sure you are informed about the latest laws regarding electronic
communication.
• Privacy – or its slow erosion – is a big concern for web users. As the borders
between public and private life begin to blur, customers are wary of giving
out personal data.
1. The field is growing and will become the largest and most important marketing
sector in coming years.
On top of that, web users are becoming more aware and marketing savvy, and
their attention spans are shortening as desirable content becomes ever more
quickly available. This market is more likely to challenge, debate and denigrate
a brand – but it is also more likely to share good content and products with an
exponentially growing social circle.
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your cellphone: it makes calls, has a small camera, functions as a web browser
and calendar and probably does a range of other software-based tasks. This is
a good example of a basic convergence device: many functions are compressed
into one piece of technology. Many devices are far more complex. Apple’s new
iPad tablet computer performs thousands of possible function and can be used as
a portable computer, document reader, web browser, media platform and so on.
Convergence also happens between seemingly unrelated devices. For example,
some advanced refrigerators include a small computer and internet connection:
the appliance monitors what food is in stock and automatically orders the
necessary replacements at an online grocery shopping site when you run low.
Child-protection devices monitor a child’s location over GPS and its vital signs with
a range of sophisticated equipment. Content can now move seamlessly between
desktop and mobile devices. In an always-connected, converging world, marketing
will have to adapt constantly and spread along these new technological lines.
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web. The semantic web is a concept that means the exponentially growing
amount of data will be categorised in personal and human-usable ways, enabling
even better, more meaningful and more accessible content than ever. In other
words, raw data will become real information. Web 3.0 also involved the concepts
described above, especially portability, control over marketing and customisation
of everything. In the far future, experts even predict the invention of web-based
artificial intelligence that will think ahead and source information before a user
even knows it’s needed. Since web 3.0 is all about “me”, marketing must take
personalisation and engagement to a new level.
You are a book publisher and you are releasing a book by a new author. A potential
customer searches Google for her favourite genre and sees the sponsored advert
announcing the book launch. She clicks it to access the information, which takes
her to a microsite created especially for the launch, primed with keywords. The
page displays a link to your Twitter feed and another link that allows her to read
a sample chapter if she fills in her name and email address.
Curious about the book, she submits her details and immediately likes the material.
She writes about it in her own Twitter feed, cross-posting it on her Facebook
profile, including your URL and Twitter username. Her friends immediately follow
the link, and some enter their details. One of them says he will attend the book
launch, and another pre-orders the book on Kalahari.net. Using your web analytics
tools, you are able to track how many people respond to her posting, and where
– and how – they engage.
She isn’t sure about the book herself and sends a question to your Twitter profile.
You and the author both respond within ten minutes, sparking a conversation
between you and another of her friends. Because she is engaging with you,
you decide to offer her 20% off the ebook version that she can read on her
smartphone. A few weeks later, you email her and her friends some bonus video
content that relates to the book, and let them know about another author whose
writing they may enjoy.
Does this sound like the kind of engagement you would like to have with your
customers? When you integrate all of the strategies in this course into a holistic
marketing plan, results like these are not only possible, they’re easy.
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done on the official website. A website can offer additional features, like useful
resources, online shopping and customer support.
• Direct postal mail > email. Email is the targeted, personalised equivalent of
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• Surveys, polls and market research > web analytics. The traditional way of
measuring the effectiveness of a marketing campaign was to take survey and
polls of consumers and to measure the effect on the company’s income; both
quite blunt and subjective measures. Web analytics are very different – they
allow absolute and precise measurement of every activity that your marketing
material is involved in, giving you the best picture of what works.
• Traditional PR > web PR. Traditional PR usually happens behind closed doors,
as individual problems and complaints can be dealt with in private, or on the
large scale, through impersonal broadcast media. On the web, PR takes on an
entirely different dimension, because anyone can read what others are saying
about your company. If the message is bad, a substantial crisis can occur.
Brand management and PR are incredibly important on the web, because even
one dissident voice can have a marked effect.
• Word of mouth > viral. Traditional marketing relies heavily on word of mouth
to spread slogans, brand names and recommendations, and the web is no
different. However, online word of mouth has the tendency to spread virally,
as each agent is linked to exponentially increasing numbers of people down the
line. If every Facebook user has an average of 100 friends, then every profile
is just two steps away from 1 million others. Figures of this scale indicate just
why ideas can spread virally on the web.
• The website is the cornerstone of the entire campaign and the destination
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for all links that are published. It is the repository of your company’s online
content and the destination for accurate and up-to-date information about
your offerings.
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• An email newsletter should link to your website and social networking profiles.
It keeps interested customers informed of relevant news and special offers.
• Online adverts drive web traffic to your website and inform viewers about the
characteristics of your brand and product in a few words.
• Proper use of keywords promotes your website and ensures that your online
adverts appear to the right people.
• Social media channels can drive word-of-mouth promotion and make your
brand more personal. They link to your website, serve as an alternative to
email updates and act as the launch pad for viral marketing promotions.
• Mobile marketing lets you communicate with customers on the go, facilitating
social networking, using the website and getting updates.
• Finally, web analytics lets you monitor your customers’ online activities and
enables you to measure the return on investment in order to evolve and
improve your overall strategy to increase returns.
7. Summary
You’re embarking on an exciting and challenging learning experience, one that you
and your business will benefit from immensely. Internet marketing is a dynamic
field that is going to evolve considerably in the next few years, and now is the best
time for South Africans to get aboard the bandwagon.
• Learned about the basics of internet marketing and all its components
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• Learned about the brief history of internet marketing and the companies and
people who revolutionised it
• Explored the South African internet marketing context, and the industry as
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a whole.
• Discovered how you will integrate all the parts of this course into a holistic
marketing strategy
8. References
1. Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet
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16. E-Marketing (5th edition). Strauss, J. and Frost, R. (2009). Prentice Hall.
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CHAPTER 2
Key concepts
The website as the center of an online marketing strategy, specification sheet, principles
of visual web design, creating and managing content, legal requirements, technical
requirements, step-by-step process of web development.
CHAPTER 2:
WEbsiTE dEsign
And dEVEloPmEnT
1. Introduction
Your website is your most important tool for creating a marketable web presence –
it is the cornerstone of any web strategy. It is also your brand’s home on the web,
the site that anyone can visit for up-to-date facts, information, offers, community
and other features –the equivalent of an online business card. Your website is your
online office, the hub of business activity. This chapter will help you understand
why a website is so vital, how to create a tailored page for your marketing needs,
and what common mistakes to avoid.
• Learn why the website is the centre of your online marketing strategy (section
2).
• Find out what a specification sheet is, and how to create one (section 3).
• Learn how to create and manage content on your website (section 4).
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• You control the page. A website is a place where you can express your brand
and marketing message fully, in whatever way you want. You are generally
not constrained by anything except your imagination and budget. It is also
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the definitive source for accurate facts and information about your business
and products.
• All roads lead to your website. As you will see in the mind map below, your
website is the hub that all your other marketing strategies lead to. In effect,
it is the final destination for every aspect of your online campaign.
• You are expected to have one. If a customer can’t find you at www.yourbrand.
co.za, they are unlikely to expend any more effort to find you. Today’s
connected audience takes it for granted that your have a slick website with
all the requisite information. Gone are the days of leafing through the Yellow
Pages (unless it’s online); you need a website that is easy to find and even
easier to navigate.
• It is your brand’s online home. Your website is the one part of the web that
is completely devoted to your brand and marketing message. It serves as a
reference point for customers, fellow businesses and even your own staff.
Not only do you provide content, you can also use it as a point of sale, a
social community and a message board.
Think of your website as the online equivalent of your physical office. When clients
visit your office, they expect certain services and features to be in place. The
same principles can be applied to your website. For example:
The customer needs to know where to The customer needs to know what
go in the building. parts of your website to visit. This is
called the user experience (see section
4.4).
The environment should be clean and The website must be designed
welcoming, and should look professional according to good principles so that
and neat. it looks professional and is easy to
access and navigate. This is called the
user interface (see section 4.4).
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As you can see, the website plays an integral role in the standard business activities
and can even supplant the functions of a physical office in many ways. If your
business is already transacting online, it is vital that you have a website; if you are
considering moving your business onto the web, your website is the logical and
best place to start your strategy. This module will guide you through designing
and developing an effective marketing website. In module 3, you will learn how
to create valuable copy for your page, and in module 6, you will be shown how to
optimise your page to make it easy to find online. Your website will also form the
basis of several assignments for this course.
Figure 1: This mind map depicts how all the topics you will learn about later in
this course lead back to your website.
• Are they online? If no, your website needs only the most basic features, just
in case somebody does look for it. If yes, you will need to make sure that your
site is easily recognisable and more elaborate.
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Since you are creating a website for your target market, and not yourself, this
analysis must inform every step of the website creation process.
This document can be created by you alone, but is generally drafted in consultation
with your designer and developer. Specification sheets vary in detail, complexity
and technical content. It is always best to err on the side of too much detail, but
don’t worry too much about the specific technical jargon; if you explain what you
want clearly enough, your developer will translate your requests into technical
terms for you.
Keep in mind that a specification sheet is a contract between you and your service
provider, and is intended to protect both parties when confusion or disagreements
arise. Always keep a copy of your specification sheet for yourself, and make sure
all changes are approved by both sides. Also take note that leaving the design and
development in the hands of a technical person may result in an end product that
works but has no visual appeal or marketing logic. You need to have a hand in the
whole process to make sure that your website works but is also nice to look at and
communicates the correct message.
• The overall goals of the website – the objectives you want to achieve with
your page
• The design deliverables – do you just need a website design, or do you also
need a new corporate identity, logo or other elements?
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• Individual page layouts (including the navigation bar, links, headers and
footers and so on)
• The structure of the website as a whole (which pages link to each other, how
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• A specification of the colours and visual design elements (like the logo,
patterns, background, images, etc.)
• The functionality of the pages (in other words, what each page will do)
• The intended user experience (what journey a typical user will take through
the site, depending on the purpose of their visit)
• Where the website is hosted (on your own server, a local server or an
international server)
• What the domain (web address) of the website will be (for example, www.
mycompany.co.za)
Programming languages
There is no need to be intimidated by the complex-looking jargon around
programming languages. In essence, a programming language is just a way of
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expressing a desired outcome in a way a computer will understand. Here are the
most popular programming languages.
HTML. This is the most basic and most common programming language, and is
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used for building virtually all websites. Read more here: www.wisegeek.com/what-
is-html.htm.
CSS. This is programming tool for designing websites. It allows the programmer
to create set styles and then apply them easily to HTML-coded websites (for
example, you can define what a heading should look like, and then apply that style
to all text that is tagged as “heading”). Read more here: www.wisegeek.com/
what-is-css.htm.
Java. This is a programming language that allows you to create small applications,
like games and interactive elements, and put them on your page. It is unlikely that
you will need to use Java on your website. Read more here: www.boutell.com/
newfaq/definitions/java.html.
4. Web design
Web design is the process of planning and creating the way your website will look
and feel. It is the first part of creating your website and is the stage where you
can implement your creative ideas, branding and visual appeal.
4.1 Planning
As with any marketing strategy or project, thorough initial planning is essential.
Planning a website involves considering its role in your business plan and allocating
sufficient resources to the development and upkeep of the page. At the planning
stage, answer the following important questions.
1. What is the purpose of your website? Try to summarise your goals and
objectives in two sentences, and let this definition inform every stage of the
development process.
Our website should be easy to find for people looking for gardening services
in the Cape Town area. Visitors should request a quote and contact us by
email.
We want our website to rank high in search results and draw traffic to our
active Facebook Page. We also want to generate prospective leads with
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Our website must provide useful content for people in the book publishing
field. We want to entrench our position as the leading book publishers in
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our genre.
2. What do you need on your website? Make a list of all the tools and functions
that are essential for your website, and be strict with yourself not to include
unnecessary extras. This list is important because if your project goes over
budget, you will know which elements are not negotiable, and which can
safely be cut. In strictest terms, the only essential aspects of a website are
the home, about and contact pages, a navigation bar and your corporate
branding; however, this would make for a bland site. Let your website’s
purpose guide you.
3. What do you want on your website? Once you have noted the essentials,
think of the other useful elements that it would be good to have on your
website. Again, be careful not to add frivolous and excessive details. Some
useful additions include:
• A contact form that your customers can fill out, so that you can get their
contact details along with their permission to send them emails.
• One-click sharing on your content so that readers can instantly post your
content to their Facebook, Twitter and other profiles (more on this in
chapter 7).
4. How much control do you want over managing the website? Do you want to
be able to do everything yourself, or would you prefer for your developer or
IT department to manage your page and update your content? In addition,
consider how often the content will change: if you post a blog article every
day, it is easier and quicker to manage the website in-house, but if the content
is relatively static, you can safely leave your developer to manage it.
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industry’s standards and expectations are. Also have a look at pages of companies
in related industries for ideas. Be sure that any design you choose is appropriate
for your type of business. For example, here are four websites for legal practices.
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All four pages have a very conservative design and favour black, white and shades
of grey over bright colours. This is in line with the professional and serious image
that legal professionals aim to portray to their customers.
This also speaks to the target market, which is a related and important point. While
it may seem like a good idea to create a website that is radically different from
your competitors’, so that you stand out, this tactic is likely to backfire unless
you have done some extensive research. This is because your target market has
already defined the standards for your industry and has certain set expectations. A
lawyer’s website filled with brightly coloured animations and an unusual layout will
be dismissed as untrustworthy, regardless of the actual content and reputation.
However, you can still come across as professional and trustworthy by doing
something different, within these parameters.
Another important consideration is that your website must fit in with your overall
corporate identity (your company’s logo, colours and print designs). Creating a
holistic and uniform brand image is vital and your website – as an integral part
of your strategy – must fit in with your other marketing communications. Your
designer will be able to advise you on adapting your corporate identity for the
web, since this involves considerations like using web-safe colours and fonts (see
section 4.2.4).
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listing your contact details will be quite small, whereas a content-rich online
marketing hub will be much more detailed.
Here are the three essential pages any website should have. Refer to chapter 3
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for guidelines on creating the written content for your pages. It is a good idea to
name these pages as below, since these are the names web users expect to find
and understand.
1. Home. Your home page, also called the index page, is the welcome page for
your website and the first thing that your visitors will see when they arrive.
Technically, this is the only page that your website must have (since it must
have at least one page and this will, by default, be the index page). Your
home page should serve as a roadmap to your most important content and
should guide new customers to the best parts of your website. Keep the page
clean and include a small amount of written content introducing your brand.
2. About. Your about page is the place where you describe your company and
state what your brand’s goals, origins and business principles are. Include
information that you think your customers would like to know, including your
proven experience, track record, awards and feedback from customers. Some
companies like to include a page with photos of their staff or managers,
especially if they run a service business or the people are well-known figures.
If it is relevant and interesting, write a short piece about the history of your
company. Note that this page is not used to describe the services or products
you offer, but is rather a little background on the company and what it is
aiming to achieve.
3. Contact. Your contact page is vital because it provides your customer with the
means of reaching you and potentially entering into a commercial relationship
with you. Include the contact details you want your customers to use – if
you want them to visit your premises, provide your address (and maybe
even a map and GPS coordinates); if you prefer them to call or email, add
those details too. Note that you are expected to provide an email address
– since your customers have chosen to interact with you online, they need
an equivalent online contact medium. If you have a presence on any social
networks, include those details too. Finally, if you get many questions and
support queries, consider adding an online form that customers can fill out to
save them the hassle of constructing an email. Keep in mind that if you don’t
have a contact page, people won’t be able to get hold of you. Make it as easy
as possible for potential clients to connect with your business or brand.
Aside from these three, your website can have a wide variety of other pages –
again, depending on your type of business and what you need from your website.
Here are some suggested additions.
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2. Blog. If you have the time and energy to run a blog (see module 7 for more
on this), this is a good addition to any website. A blog is an online journal
where you can post short, regular articles on your topic of expertise. This is
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a great way to demonstrate your knowledge, provide useful content for your
customers and improve your search engine ranking (you will learn all about SEO
in module 6) – not to mention a way of opening a channel of communication
with your target market to interact with you. A blog is also a good place
to announce the latest news and press releases for your organisation. Be
aware that a blog requires a lot of work and maintenance, and that a poorly
maintained blog can do more harm than good. Ensure that you have the
time and resources to create at least one post every two weeks, and more
if possible.
3. Custom error page. If somebody types in the incorrect web address for one of
your pages, they will get a “404” error message. This usually looks like this:
However, you can customise this page to display a specific message to your
customers, to redirect them back to your real page. A good error page will
have a short explanation about the error, advice about how to return to the
previous page and a link back to your home page, like this one.
If you have a sitemap, you can include a link to it. The most important thing
is that your customer should not leave your website just because of a small
mistake or typo. Your web developer will be able to create a custom error
page for you. You can find more advice on this here: www.codinghorror.com/
blog/2007/03/creating-user-friendly-404-pages.html, and you will learn
more in module 6.
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are two important concepts to consider. First, these elements can either be static
– which means that they remain identical on each page of your website (this is
also called “universal” or “global”) – or dynamic – which means that they change
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from page to page. Second, every web page has a “fold”, which is the imaginary
line at the bottom of your screen: if an element is “above the fold”, it means
you can view it without scrolling down; “below the fold” is the opposite of this.
Because of this, content that is above the fold generally gets more exposure than
content that is below it, which in turn impacts where you’ll place elements and key
information on a web page.
The image below indicates the design elements of a typical web page, including an
indication of where the “fold” is (the black line through the page).
Here are the main components of a web page, and the criteria that should apply
to them.
• The header. Your header is the top-most element of your web page and is
the part that includes your brand name and logo. This is where customers will
look to identify your page, so be sure that it is clear and striking. Your logo
should always appear on the top left of the page, and should be a clickable
image that takes you to the home page. You header will be static and will
always appear above the fold.
• The navigation bar. One step below your header is the navigation bar – the
row of buttons that visitors click on to get to other parts of your site. Always
make sure that your navigation is a horizontal bar at the top, and not a
vertical bar. Depending on the complexity of your page, your navigation bar
could consist of just a few buttons, or it could have elaborate dropdown
menus with many links. Your navigation bar will usually remain static and
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will always appear above the fold. It is vital that you give your links obvious
names, so that visitors have no trouble finding what they need. The worst
type of navigation is “mystery meat” navigation, where the visitor is not
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given any clues about where each click will take them.
Figure 4: Breadcrumb links on www.kalahari.net show you which part of the store
you are viewing.
Figure 5: The NYTimes’ expanded website navigation. The first row is the main
navigation bar, while the second row is the expanded “Arts” section (within
which the “Books” link has been expanded even further).
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• The main body. Below your navigation bar, and comprising the largest part
of your page, is the main body – which includes all your text, images, articles
and links. The body of your page is the only truly dynamic element of your
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website and appears both above and below the fold, depending on how much
content you include. Therefore, it is very important to plan your page content
so that the most important links and information are immediately available
and visible, and that supplementary or secondary content is placed below the
fold.
• The footer. The footer is the bar that appears at the bottom of the page, and
can play many different roles. First, it is the place where copyright notices,
terms of use and other legal documents are stored. Second, it can work as a
secondary navigation with links to related pages, or can even be a duplicate of
the top navigation bar. Third, it can provide additional links to less important
elements, like the company’s social networking profiles. Lastly, it can be a
way to add keywords into the link’s anchor text for SEO purposes. In almost
all cases, the footer will be static and will be below the fold. Very few people
scroll to the bottom of a page, so never include any vital information there.
• The sidebar. The sidebar is the vertical bar that runs down the length of a
page on either the left or right hand side – or sometimes on both. Sidebars
can have many functions. Typically, they are used to display useful related
links, updated news, the company’s social networks and other valuable
information. Depending on how a sidebar is used, it can be a primary aspect
of the page or a supplementary, less significant resource. This will also define
whether it is dynamic or static. Since it runs the length of the page, it will
have parts that are both above and below the fold.
Keep it simple. A website with a complex navigation, many sidebar links, lots of
text and dozens of images will only confuse and put off your visitors. Keep your
design as simple and neat as possible, and trim away excess content – especially
on your home page. Your visitor should have no doubt about what you want them
to look at and click. If you do need to present a lot of information, make sure it is
extremely well structured and that your navigation is clear.
Prefer minimalism. Web design puts a high value on “white space”, or the empty
places between page elements (which is typically, but not necessarily, white). It is
good to have a lot of white space so that your page looks uncluttered and stylish.
It also helps lead the viewer’s eye to the most important elements – which is part
of a good viewer interface (see section 4.4). This doesn’t mean having a page
that is practically empty; it means that you shouldn’t clutter things and all the
elements of your page should have their own place and be easy to see.
Screen resolution. Screen resolution is the size and shape of the computer
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monitor that your page will be viewed on. Most web users have quite a high
screen resolution, though most still use the “square” aspect ratio rather than a
“widescreen” one. For a detailed overview, have a look at www.a3webtech.com/
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index.php/best-screen-resolution.html.
Figure 6: These boxes show the sizes and shapes of various screen resolutions.
Limit your colours and fonts. In line with the philosophy that simple is best, keep
your design to just a few complementary colours and never use more that three
fonts on your website – one is sufficient, as is a standard size. A very important
thing to remember when planning your content is never to make entire words or
sentences capital letters unless it is absolutely necessary – in the online world,
using caps is the equivalent to shouting. Take inspiration from your corporate
identity and existing business designs.
Figure 7: A colour chart indicating web-safe colours. The numbers in the boxes
are the specific codes that identify each colour.
(Source: html-color-codes.com)
Also, make sure that your colours and fonts are “web safe”. Web-safe fonts and
colours are those that anyone using any type of computer and web browser will
be able to view. Never use elements on your page that are not web safe, no
matter how nice they may look: if your customer doesn’t have your obscure font
installed on their computer, they will just see an empty page or a line of gibberish.
35
Your designer can advise you on the best fonts and colours to use. View these
resources to see a list of web-safe colours (html-color-codes.com) and fonts
(www.fonttester.com/web_safe_fonts.html).
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Practical considerations. Use your own common sense when you assess your own
page and make adjustments accordingly. Is the text too small or too big? Does
the font and background colour combination make the words hard to read? Is
your heading too big or indistinguishable from the main text? Do your images load
properly, or do they take a long time to appear? Do you have to scroll sideways to
view the whole page? Are there any unnecessary elements cluttering your view?
Are related topics and items grouped together, or is there no discernible order? A
detailed examination of your page will reveal issues like these.
Standardise your style. There is nothing worse than a schizophrenic website with
a new design on every page and a different font and colour for each element.
Make sure that your design stays consistent throughout your website. A good way
to ensure this is to tell your developer to use CSS (which stands for “cascading
style sheet”) when coding your website. This works just like paragraph styles in
Microsoft Word: you can define what “heading 1” or “body text” should look like
by creating a CSS style, and if you ever want to update your page, you can simply
tweak the CSS and the update will be applied to your entire page.
If you want to consider some more advanced aspects of designing for web, have
a look at this detailed article: sixrevisions.com/web_design/gestalt-principles-
applied-in-design.
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• Multiple colourful backgrounds and font colours are confusing – what is a link?
• Vertical navigation makes the visitor scroll down, and the links are not clearly
named.
• Far too much clutter and content that is not optimised for web reading. No
white space to guide the eye or create a sense of order.
• In addition, the site plays music automatically. This is undesirable for several
reasons: it dramatically slows the loading time of the page, it annoys the
viewer and it can infringe copyright, as it seems to do in this case.
Good design:
• Excellent design layout means that the entire page appears above the fold
(you don’t need to scroll down at all).
• Having two navigation bars is confusing, but the links are clearly labelled.
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• Text is well laid out for readability and is short, and the headings are clearly
defined.
For a small business, it is sufficient to note the basic style elements, colours,
fonts and layout preferences, as well as the approaches to usability and user-
friendliness (for example, never having more than five headings in the navigation
bar). If you want to create a more detailed web style guide, you can refer to this
link: www.pebbleroad.com/articles/view/Creating-Maintaining-a-Web-Style-Guide.
4.3.1 Hierarchy
Your content must be organised in a strict hierarchy depending on where it appears
on the page, and which page in the overall website it is located on. Your content
hierarchy is intrinsically linked to your navigation, and you can structure both of
these parts simultaneously. For example:
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Each box is a separate page that can be accessed from the page that is one
step higher in the hierarchy. This outline also informs your navigation and helps
you structure your user journey through your website. It also shows how related
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On an individual page, the most important content must appear at the top, while
less important information should be listed in order of relevance below. In addition,
group related page elements together – for example, have one area for product
photos, one area for social networking links, and so on. This will help organise your
page for the benefit of your visitors.
The call to action should be unambiguous – your visitors want to know what is
important, desirable or relevant on your page – so don’t be afraid to steer them
with action words and stand-out graphics.
Sitemaps
You may have seen the term “sitemap” used on some websites. A sitemap is
essentially a visual depiction of the hierarchy of your website, to help users find
out where they are on your page or where the content they are looking for is.
There are two types of sitemaps.
1. HTML sitemap. An HTML sitemap is a useful tool for your visitors if they ever get
lost or need to find specific content on your page. This type of sitemap has to be
updated manually by the website owner if a page is added, moved or deleted. Not
many people use a sitemap, so it is not crucial for simple websites. However, they
can help to ensure that visiting search engine spiders are able to find and assign
context to all of your website’s content (you’ll learn more about search engine
optimisation in chapter 7). Here is the complex sitemap for Apple’s website: www.
apple.com/sitemap and a simpler example: conformis.com/Sitemap.
2. XML sitemap. An XML sitemap is a file created in a markup language called XML
that contains a list of your site’s URLs. An XML sitemap is useful for search engine
optimisation because it gives clear direction to a search engine as to where the
important content is on your website. You can automatically generate an XML
sitemap using a variety of free tools online. Once created, the sitemap will reside
on your website’s server, but can be submitted directly to the search engine
concerned. With Google, for example, you’ll submit it through their Webmaster
Tools interface. Your web developer will be able to help you to set up your Google
Webmaster Tools account, create your XML sitemap and submit it to the engine.
To assess whether your website is achieving its goal, create some key performance
indicators (KPIs). A KPI is a type of action that you want web users to take when
they visit your page – it is the measure of success for your website’s goal. For
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example, if your goal is to get more people to join your social networks, your key
performance indicators will be the number of clicks on your social networking
links and the number of new members in your community – if these numbers are
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high, your KPIs will show that you are achieving your goals. You will learn how to
measure and analyse this type of data in chapter 8.
1. Basic template CMS. This type of CMS can be used by anyone because it is
very simple and just requires the user to enter the new data. No technical
knowledge is needed. If you have ever used WordPress (www.wordpress.
com) or Blogger, you have used a simple template CMS. Yola also has a basic
template CMS. This is also the cheapest option, but has the fewest features.
2. Open source CMS. This type of CMS is more advanced and can be customised
by a web developer to include the features you want. This can be a good
option for non-technical people, depending on your choice of open source
CMS. Joomla (www.joomla.org) is a popular option. Open source CMSes are
also free.
If you plan to update and add content to your page often, choose a CMS that you
find easy to use – that way, you can manage the content yourself without having
to hire a web developer. If your page is going to remain largely static with few
changes, which is unlikely, it is all right to pick a more complex option – but even
in this scenario, you can save yourself time and money by using a system you
understand. The complexity of your website is largely dependent on which CMS
you choose.
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part of creating a website – tailoring it to your users. Above all other concerns,
you should strive to make your site as accessible and appropriate to your target
market as possible. Remember – your website is for them.
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• The journey through the page – is it easy to find everything you need and to
travel between sections? Does the website flow or stutter? Are there enough
choices? Are there too many choices?
• Whether the elements on the page are appropriate and targeted to the user
• What value the user perceives in the page and the product
• How well the user can engage with the content (for example, by sharing or
commenting on it)
Advertising agencies and website developers can spend months researching how
users interact with a website – they even create imaginary personas and work
through the website as though they were those people. There is no single way to
create a definitive user experience, but you can plan for a specific one. Naturally,
your ideal journey takes the customer from your home page to the website’s goal,
whatever that is for your website. You can manipulate how a user browses your
page by including strategic links to relevant content, and by clearly stating your
call to action whenever you can. Make sure that none of your pages are dead ends
– there should always be something more to click on and explore.
For a small business, the best ways to get insights on your user experience are
to track your web analytics, especially with heat maps that indicate the places
of most activity on your page (you will learn about this in chapter 8), and simply
to ask the customers. If they feel a page is too cluttered and confusing, you
should consider streamlining the content or splitting it up over several pages.
If they can’t work out what your website wants them to do, you should revise
your calls to action and the placement of your links and images. There is a great
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Respect copyright. Copyright is the exclusive right of a creator to use and exploit
their creative work however they choose. This means that nobody else may use,
adapt or sell the work without the creator’s permission. For your website, never
infringe anybody else’s copyright by taking images, texts or videos off the web
and using them without asking for permission (and potentially paying a royalty
fee) first. In other words, don’t just take videos off YouTube or images from
Google Image Search. If you would like to quote a short section from somebody
else’s article, you can do this as long as you reference the source and provide a
link back to the original – this is called fair use. To protect your own copyright,
include a copyright notice in the footer of your website.
The Creative Commons licences have made it possible to use content where it
has been permitted – pay attention to the different variations of the rules, which
generally allow content to be used as long as you attribute it to the owner. You
can read more about it here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons.
Terms of use and disclaimers. To protect yourself from litigation and to establish
acceptable behaviour by users of your website, you can include terms of use. If
you do a web search for “terms of use”, you will find many examples of the kinds
of terms that are generally set. By default, anyone who accesses your website
implicitly agrees to your terms of use. If your website contains content that may
be considered defamatory or offensive, you can add a disclaimer stating that your
company does not necessarily endorse the activities that users perform on your
site – for example, if they post obscene material in a blog comment. Note that if
anything outright illegal is posted on your page, you are responsible for removing
it and can still be held liable for it. This highlights the importance of monitoring and
moderating your online community.
Privacy policy. If at any point you ask your users to provide you with personal
information, like an email address, name or date of birth, you must spell out exactly
how you will use that data – and what you will not do. It is not acceptable to sell
or give the information to anyone else without informing the users about this
possibility first. In general, this information should be held in strictest confidence
and should only ever be used for your own marketing purposes, to the extent
that you have defined in your privacy policy. For example, if a customer signs
up for an email newsletter, it is unacceptable to use that information to find and
contact them on Facebook. Always err on the side of caution when dealing with
42
user data. If you want to use a customer’s feedback, name or photo on your
page (for example, in your testimonials section) always email them to get written
permission first.
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4.6 Applications
Getting an expertly designed and developed website is exciting and professional,
but it is also time consuming and expensive. For small businesses that want a
basic website to showcase a small amount of information, the alternative is to
create your own website using one of the excellent free tools available online.
To remedy this, you can download and apply free themes from WooThemes (www.
woothemes.com/themes/free). A theme is a customised design that can be added
to your WordPress website. While the standard WordPress options may be quite
boring and unprofessional, WooThemes will make your page look slicker and more
unique. If you want, you can also choose from one of the many paid-for themes.
4.6.2 Yola
Yola is a free website-building tool that lets you focus more strongly on design
elements and useful add-ons. Its simple and friendly interface allows you to
literally drag and drop features like text, images, videos, maps and other tools
onto your page. You don’t need any technical experience to build a Yola website.
Like WordPress, Yola has a wide variety of themes that you can use – some free
and some paid-for. For this course, you will be creating a website in Yola. See your
assignment for more details.
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them:
5. Web development
Web design is the process of conceptualising and creating the appearance of your
website. Web development is the process of turning those ideas into a functioning
website. Don’t worry – for this course, you will not be required to do any technical
programming or work with any confusing code.
On the other hand, hiring a developer makes more sense for a bigger company
with a complex website that needs to be maintained frequently. While this option
is more expensive (since you will be paying a monthly salary), it is convenient
to have a developer on call if your website encounters a problem. This is also a
consideration for companies whose entire business is web based, like an online
retailer or service provider, where any website problems can lead to a considerable
loss of business. The middle ground is to hire a developer on a part-time basis or
on retainer, which means that the developer allocates a set number of hours to
your company and website each month.
44
properly with your web developer – and that you listen to their professional advice.
The first important aspect is making sure that you have the correct documents.
These are:
• Your design specification sheet and the designs your designer has created,
which you have approved.
• Your technical brief, which you will work on with your developer and transform
into your technical specification sheet.
When you meet with your developer, explain in normal language what sorts of
features and goals you want for your website, outlining as many details as possible,
and feel free to show examples. Take the time to understand the developer’s input
and suggestions, and ask them to create a technical specification sheet for the
project. Then do your homework by researching the suggestions made to make
sure you fully understand the parameters of what the developer has suggested.
Remember that a developer is a professional but may not be looking at all the
important aspects, like your target market, so be open to new ideas but keep your
own view in mind.
A web developer will strive to make your website meet the following five criteria:
1. Easy to update. Ideally, your website should have a simple CMS that you can
manipulate easily and without technical expertise.
2. Quick to load. Your website must have a small enough file size so that is
will load quickly for a wide variety of people using different computers,
connections and browsers.
4. Interactive. Your developer will include interactive elements like the navigation,
links, a search feature or other additions. Your development costs will vary
depending on how many extras you want.
5. Secure. Your developer should put measures in place to protect your website
against spammers, viruses and other web risks.
Like with any other project, make sure that you clarify rates and deadlines before
you approve the work – and be prepared for unexpected delays or problems,
which can occur regularly with web development. Outline the exact outcomes and
deliverables of the project in clear terms; find out what service or maintenance
agreement – if any – is included in the cost. Keep a good documented record of all
decisions made, in case there is a dispute about an aspect of the project.
45
You will be given the chance to make small corrections as the project progresses,
within reason, but understand what it means when you “sign off” on something.
Signing off means that you are happy with and fully approve the feature under
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discussion; after you have signed off, the element cannot be changed again
(except at considerable cost when the developer must revert the project to an
earlier phase). Be completely sure that you are happy with something before you
sign off on it.
5.3.1 Hosting
Hosting is the service of storing your website on a specific computer, called a
server, so that web users can access it through their browsers. Every website
needs to be hosted somewhere. You have two options for hosting:
1. You can hire space at a web host. Getting your site hosted externally is a
good and affordable option for websites that are small in size and that have a
moderate number of visitors. A small or medium website can be hosted for as
little as R150 a month, although with the cheaper the option, you get fewer
features and extras.
2. You can host your website yourself. This is a more complex and expensive
option up front, but can be worth it if your website receives a lot of traffic.
You will need to have an IT professional to manage the server, but you won’t
have to pay monthly hosting fees. This option is generally only viable for big
companies.
• Are customers more likely to look for your company name because your
business is well known and reputable, or will they look for the service that the
business offers in general terms?
• Keep your domain name short so that it is easy to remember and type. At
the same time, avoid confusing acronyms (www.frdll.co.za) that nobody will
be able to recall.
• Use keywords. Like you will learn in chapters 3 and 6, keywords are specific
words that you use to describe your product. Try to include a keyword in
your domain name to make your website easier to find. For example: www.
abcwebdesign.co.za – just bear in mind that it still needs to be relatively
short. Having a keyword in your domain name isn’t essential. You could also
choose something that is easy to remember, through you will need to build a
46
• What domain do you want to register under? Choose .co.za if you are a
specific South African business, or .com if you market your services overseas.
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Second, you have to check if your chosen domain name is still available. Every
website must have a unique name. To see if your chosen one is available, simply
type it into the address bar at the top of your browser and press enter.
If your domain name is available, you can go ahead and register it. To do this,
we advise that you speak with your internet service provider (the company that
provides your internet connection) and let them handle the process for you. A
domain name costs R50 per year to register, plus your ISP’s admin fee of around
R30. The process is very complex and you shouldn’t attempt it yourself, but here
is how it works for your interest:
1. Visit http://co.za.
2. Open the application form and copy the text into the body of an email.
3. Fill out the form (you will need to understand a lot of technical jargon to do
this – this is a task for your technical team).
5. Pay the R50 fee by credit card or EFT to activate your domain.
6. Ask your web developer to add a piece of code that will force a web browser
to go to your page even if people leave the “www” out of your web address,
as many people tend to do. Forcing this redirect means that people searching
for “abccompany.co.za” will still end up on the correct “www.abccompany.
co.za” page.
47
If the domain name is not available, you have two options. First, you can contact
the current owner and ask if they will sell the name to you – though the price may
be much higher that it would be because it is in demand. If you negotiate a fee,
the domain registration details will be updated and the name will transfer to you.
Second, you can modify your domain until you find one that is available. Try adding
an underscore (urban_farmers) to separate words, “sa” (urbanfarmingsa) to the
end of the name, or a keyword, like “abccompanybrokers”.
• Images: If you want custom artwork for your site, expect to pay R1,000 to
R3,000 per image. For photographs, you will need to purchase them from a
photographer or stock library for anything from R10 to R1,000.
• Custom CMS: R20,000 for the most rudimentary version. Every additional
element, like a custom forum or ecommerce tool, will cost extra – R40,000
or more each.
In total, you can expect to pay around R30,000 for a good, simple and effective
website. For R50,000, you will get extra useful features.
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The entire process should take 4 to 6 months, with a few weeks leeway for
problems that arise.
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2. You consult a variety of web design and development experts and get quotes
from them.
3. You choose a developer and designer and develop your design and technical
specification sheets with them.
4. The designer creates a visual mock-up of your website for you to approve.
5. The developer takes the mock-up and transforms it into a functional website.
You then approve the final version.
6. You pay your developer, the website is uploaded to your hosting provider and
it goes live.
7. Summary
Getting a well-functioning and effective website is the first and most important
step of your internet marketing strategy. Depending on your needs, you can build
a website yourself or get a team of specialists to help you. Either way, keep all
of the design and development tips from this chapter in mind throughout the
process.
• Learned how to create the right types of content for your website.
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8. References
1. An example of a website specification: www.vordweb.co.uk/example_
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website_specification.htm
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CHAPTER 3
ONLINE COPYWRITING
AND WEB PR
Key concepts
What is web copywriting, good writing in general and writing for the web specifically,
nuances of writing for your website, email newsletter and blog, using free tools to manage
your online reputation, engaging with your online eudience effectively.
CHAPTER 3:
OnlinE coPywRiTing
And wEb PR
1. Introduction
Virtually all online communication is conducted in written form. People are reading
and writing more than they ever have before. At the same time, reading and
writing are two of the hardest activities to encourage in your online market, since
both take considerable time and concentration. In the first part of this chapter,
you will learn the basic techniques for good, engaging online copywriting and the
skills to apply this knowledge to different forms of web writing.
The second part of this chapter deals with online public relations, or web PR.
People communicate very differently on the web to real life, and different rules
apply for approaching and engaging with customers. This section will teach you
how to engage with people in this new environment, how to use online tools to
maximise your PR resources and how to handle reputation crises.
• Revise the principles of good writing in general, and writing for the web
specifically (section 3).
• Learn the nuances of writing for your website, email newsletter and blog
(section 3).
• Discover all aspects of web PR and learn to use free tools to help you manage
your online reputation (section 4).
• Learn how to engage with your online audience effectively (section 4).
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2. Online copywriting
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• Websites. All text on a website is web copy, from the home and contact
pages to the customer feedback and product descriptions.
• Online adverts. The text of any online advertising is also web copy, since it is
persuasive writing used to promote your product or brand.
Copy can be divided into two broad categories. Short copy comprises the small
bits of text that are dotted around your website, in your online adverts, your
promotional emails, blurbs and so on. Short copy is generally only a few sentences
long and must be direct, to the point and action oriented.
Long copy, in comparison, is any longer piece of writing, like a blog post, email
newsletter, press release or article. Long copy allows you to expand on an idea
and build a brand personality, which helps you engage with your readers, but
needs a strong headline and good style to ensure it is read. Both long and short
copy have an important place on the web and in your brand strategy.
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principles of writing for the web. This section spells out these sets of rules, and
provides guidelines for writing for your website, email newsletter and blog. Always
remember that your writing must be suited to your target market, especially in
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your level of formality and use of slang or jargon. When in doubt, keep it polite
and simple.
Keep it simple. Simple writing means short sentences, clear and direct phrasing
and avoiding complex words or jargon. Use as few words as possible to bring your
point across, and avoid padding your writing with unnecessary adjectives.
• Wrong: Our very exciting new service will completely and totally overhaul the
way you understand and think about web design, CSS, CMS and customer
subscription solutions.
• Right: Our new service will change the way you look at all aspects of web
development.
Be active, not passive. Wherever possible, write your copy using an active voice
rather than a passive one.
Write for readability. Readability is a word that means “ease of reading”. There
are many ways to make your text easier to understand. Use bolding or italics to
highlight important words, short paragraphs to keep your ideas separate, bullet
points to outline important details and subheadings to give your text structure.
Do not write whole words or paragraphs in capital letters – this is the equivalent of
shouting online and has the same negative reaction. Most web readers scan text,
which means they run their eyes over it quickly without absorbing everything.
Using these tricks will make your text more scannable and will make sure the
crucial things stand out.
• Wrong: Our product has many features, like helping you to manage your
digital documents, keep a list of your online contacts, archive your emails and
manage your diary.
54
o Archive emails
Be consistent. Every aspect of your brand should be consistent, and this is especially
important for your writing. Always make sure that your written communications use
the same terms, vocabulary, spelling, tone and level of complexity, not to mention
the small but vital stylistic elements. Though you will use different techniques for
you website, blog and other channels, all your writing should feel that it comes
from the same source. An excellent way of achieving this is to create a style guide
for your brand. A style guide specifies the standard terms, spelling and so on for
your brand-related writing – for example, do you spell the word “internet” with a
capital or lower case “i”? You can consult an editor to help you construct one, or
you can download this detailed guide: www.techwr-l.com/files/examplestyleguide.
pdf (note that it refers to US conventions). The Yahoo Style Guide is also an
excellent starting resource: styleguide.yahoo.com.
Be creative. It is perfectly acceptable to let your own creative voice come through
in your writing. You don’t want to sound like a carbon copy of every other product
or brand available. A bit of brand personality (discussed in more detail chapter 7)
is a good thing. Also be creative in what content you create – find new angles,
ideas and niches to explore.
Use correct spelling and grammar. You will look extremely unprofessional if you
have dozens of grammatical mistakes and spelling or typing errors in your writing.
If you keep things simple and consistent, you should have no trouble writing
correctly. Don’t hesitate to consult a dictionary or grammar guide if you are stuck
(you can find many useful resources online).
• Wrong: Our web tool have many useful featurs. You can customize your web
site easiliy.
• Right: Our web tool has many useful features. You can customise your website
easily.
Proofread your writing. One of the easiest ways to check whether your writing is
correct and clear is, quite simply, to read it. Proofreading is the process of reading
a piece of text in detail and fixing any stylistic, grammatical or content mistakes
that you find. Even if you are not a language expert, you will find that you pick up
lots of small errors on your own. You can also consider hiring a freelance editor to
check your writing for you. A helpful hint is to leave the content for a day before
you go back to proofread it – the time refreshes your mind and makes it easier to
pick up any errors.
55
of the reasons why creating a user experience is so important (as you learned in
chapter 2) and why writing for readability is crucial. Keeping their attention is very
difficult, and your approach to writing for the web must take this into account.
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Keep web copy short and simple. The quicker and more directly you can make
your point, the better. Put the most important information prominently at the
top so that it appears above the fold of the website (the part of the website
that is visible without scrolling down). Break your copy up into short, readable
paragraphs – this creates space and makes it easier to read. Above all, make sure
you preserve a no-nonsense approach to your brand and product; web users will
see through your marketing rhetoric easily and will mistrust your message.
• Wrong: If you have ever had the problem of not being able to access your
email on your cellphone, maybe you should consider trying out our product
sometime.
• Right: Can’t access email on your cellphone? Download our product now.
Be genuine and honest. Your writing must reflect the credibility of your brand, and
must be genuine so that readers feel a personal connection through the impersonal
online medium. Always write accurately and honestly about your product; readers
will immediately notice when your writing is hype rather than genuine enthusiasm.
Avoid exaggerated words and clichéd “marketing speak”; web readers expect
content to be frank, clear and true, and any indication that this may not be the
case will drive them away. A good way to come across as genuine is to adopt a
friendly, open and unassuming tone.
• Right: Our time management product will help your employees work together
more efficiently. Previous customers have reported a 20% increase in
productivity after the first month.
Focus on headlines, leads and captions. Often, you concentrate so much on the
main body of text that you overlook the “little extras” like the headline, the lead
(the introductory line) and captions for your images. Don’t ignore these elements.
The headline is the most important piece of writing on the page because that is
what draws a person to read your content – or not. Try to keep the headline both
as short and as specific as possible.
• Be as specific as possible
• Try to make the reader curious by using intriguing and emotive words
56
• Headlines with numbers work well (e.g. “5 tips for…” or “The top 8…”)
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• Headlines that suggest a benefit or reward are also effective (e.g. “How
to…” or “Why you should…”)
• Be honest – don’t let your headline mislead the reader about the content of
your article
The lead, or first line of your text, is vital because most readers decide whether
they will read the rest of the text based on it and the headline alone. There is a
copywriting idiom that states that the purpose of the headline is to get the first
line read, the purpose of the first line is to get the second line read, and so on.
Captions for your images are also important, since they help readers to scan the
page for interesting information. The caption should be quite short, describe your
image and indicate its relevance to the text.
• Bad headline: Your business could be made more successful if you follow
these steps (Indirect phrasing, long-winded without providing much indication
of what the article is about.)
• Good headline: Are you at risk from online identity theft? (Direct and intriguing,
creates a concern in the reader’s mind, sparks curiosity.)
Have a clear call to action. A call to action is a statement that tells the readers
exactly what you want them to do – should they buy your product? Share your
article? Follow you on Twitter? The only effective way to get people to do what
you want is to tell them directly. Your call to action will be related to the goal of
your marketing campaign and to how you measure conversion (more on this in
chapter 8). If you want to grow your online social community, the desired action
will be to engage with your social networking profiles. If you want to increase
sales, you may want visitors to download your brochure or free sample.
• Wrong: There are many ways you can keep in touch with us. Browse our
website to see more about us.
• Right: Sign up to our newsletter now to keep up to date with special offers
and promotions!
57
to know about, how you can make their lives easier or how you can entertain
them. Provide enough information so that anyone who wants to buy your service
or product can find what they need; web users can be quite cynical and will want
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to consult a lot of information before they make a decision and hand over their
money.
It is good to consider taking one of two approaches: either become the niche
expert in your field by writing about industry-relevant details and news (have a
look at www.carblog.co.za, a blog for people interested in automotive news), or
become a generalist teacher, somebody who educates outsiders or novices about
the industry (for example, www.goodadvice.co.za writes blog articles that teach
laypeople about finance concepts). Have a close look at how both blogs approach
aspects like jargon, assumed knowledge, familiarity with basic principles and levels
of specific detail.
Search engines such as Google have special processes for deciding which web
page shows up first in their lists of search results. SEO is the process of getting
your page as high up on that list as possible. There are many technical ways
of improving your position on this list, but two of them relate specifically to
copywriting: keyword optimisation, and the hierarchy of content on a web page.
Here is a primer on these concepts so that you can keep them in mind for this
chapter – you will learn how to use them properly in chapter 6.
• Keywords. When somebody searches online, one of the ways that a search
engine knows that your page is relevant to the search request is that the
same words appear on the web page as in the search term that was used.
Therefore, the more frequently these “keywords” appear on a web page, the
more relevant that page will be to a search engine for the query that was
made.
Once you have worked through chapter 6, return to this section to see how you
can apply SEO principles to the points mentioned above.
58
specific location has its own nuances. To refine your style, answer the following
questions:
Have a look at the table in section 3.6 to see a summary of the following content.
You website will consist predominantly of short copy that is written to encourage
an action. Remember that your home page is your first, and possibly only, chance
to make a good impression. A visitor who arrives on your page wants to know
exactly what is available and what is valuable on your page, so point them directly
to the best content. This is a vital part of creating the smooth user experience
you studied in chapter 2. Consider the following home page text (underlined text
is a link):
Put your company online with our one-stop web design, web development
and hosting services.
Want to learn more? Visit our Services page to see our packages and rates.
To get our latest news and special offers, follow us on Twitter – or sign up
for our free newsletter.
All of the most important information is directly available to the reader and is not
hidden in blocks of text. The readers immediately knows where to look for the
content they are likely to need and are encouraged to join the brand community.
If you’ve correctly anticipated your audience’s needs, they will click your links and
explore your website. You will still need to have at least one paragraph of text
either explaining what you do or solving a problem your target market has – this
allows you to include keywords that are relevant to your business, making search
engines see you as valuable to the search query.
59
• Your contact page. Keep your contact page to a minimum by providing your
details clearly and separately. Don’t include any text that is not directly
related to your contact details – this page must be as slimmed down as
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possible.
• Your navigation. The row of links at the top of your page, which take visitors
to other parts of your website, must be extremely clear and obvious. Try
to avoid obscure page titles because your visitors are much more likely to
leave your site than to spend a long time browsing for what they need. Also,
stick to terms that web users will be familiar with, like “home” and “contact”,
rather than inventing your own.
• Your “about” page. Customers who visit your “about” page are generally
looking for two types of information: your business credentials and your
company’s history. Provide both by giving a quick summary of your origins
and services (don’t go into too much detail here; save it for a dedicated
page), and also including a lengthier but optional story of how your company
came about. Using a personal angle is engaging and shows that you are a real,
trustworthy person to do business with.
Your subject line, like an article headline, is the most important part of the message
because it will determine whether your email is opened. Keep it consistent and
clearly branded so that readers know what to expect when it arrives in their inbox.
You will learn all about setting up an email marketing campaign in chapter 4.
60
focuses quite narrowly on a specific topic. You will learn more about how and why
to create a blog in module 7, but here are some pointers on writing great blog
content.
• While you will be writing about topics that you’re an expert on, you should still
always think first and foremost about what your customers will be interested
in reading, not what you want to tell them. For example, if you’re a tax
consultancy, writing a blog post comparing different types of tax software
is likely to be more useful than writing about your own services directly.
Remember that your blog posts should add value to your readers without
asking them to do anything in return. A blog shouldn’t be used to blatantly
sell your services, but rather to add value to your target market.
• Focus on a specific topic or angle and stick with it. Since you are writing
a corporate blog, position yourself as an expert in your industry and write
relevant, up-to-date and informative articles about your field or an aspect
within it.
• Although you are writing long copy for your blog, keep the individual articles
short. Write short, frequent entries that focus specifically on one idea
rather than longer, more detailed ones. Shorter articles are easier to read
and reference later on. Also, structure your pieces meticulously by using
subheadings, bullet points and paragraph breaks. On average, your blog posts
can be between 300 and 400 words long.
• Blog articles are a great way to improve your website’s ranking through SEO.
You will learn how to do this in module 6.
• Personal stories and case studies make for enjoyable reading and are an
excellent way to showcase customer experiences with your product. What
problem did you solve? How did you improve someone’s life or business?
• Advice articles that your readers can learn from are very popular. Topics such
as “5 ways to do…” or “4 reasons why…” are compelling, well structured and
provide value to the reader.
• Encourage audience interaction in your blog post. Ask your readers what they
think of the topic you’re talking about so that they’re encouraged to leave
comments. A blog that has lots of reader interaction is likely to be more
interesting to other readers, and also encourages existing readers to return
to your blog in future.
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3.6 Summary
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brand’s community
People already Interested people who
interested in your can be converted to People in your industry
brand/product customers
Readers interested in
People looking for a New contacts you want your content but not
solution to a problem to introduce to your necessarily your brand
brand
Convert to customers
engaging
General and Entertaining and
explanatory readable Personal and friendly
Conveys brand
personality
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4. Web PR
If selling a product is the first goal of any marketing campaign, selling the brand
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itself comes a close second. This is the essence of public relations: controlling
what is said about a brand and directing the conversations around it to maintain
the brand’s public image. PR is a massive worldwide industry and any company
with a public profile needs to engage in it to some degree. In addition, the internet
has introduced a number of new challenges and opportunities that traditional PR
practitioners need to understand.
An excellent recent example of web PR in action is how clothing brand LOFT turned
a negative sentiment around to their benefit. In July 2010, the company posted
some pictures of a skinny model wearing their new cargo pants on their Facebook
profile. Even though the photos were pretty typical of the brand’s previous
promotions, fans complained that the pants wouldn’t look good on normal-sized,
“real” women. They demanded proof that the pants were suited to all body types.
In response, LOFT’s own manager of digital programs, a woman named Julie,
posed for photos wearing the pants and uploaded them to the Facebook page the
next day. Other women of different sizes from the company did the same. The
fan response was extremely positive, the product was affirmed and customers
became more supportive of the brand. You can read more about this and some
other web PR scenarios here: mashable.com/2010/08/30/social-media-attacks-
brand.
2. Create the message. At this stage, the two branches of PR begin to diverge,
though most principles of creating a good, compelling and effective message
remain the same for both. Writing for the web requires a special technical
approach (incorporating SEO, scannability and other features like links), but
aside from some cosmetic differences, the core message and goal will be the
same.
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media, while web channels range from the online equivalents of these (news
sites, online events and internet shows like podcasts) to completely unique
channels, like social networks, websites and email. The distribution strategy
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also differs, since web media requires a much wider-ranging and diverse
approach to reach an equivalent number of people.
4. Observe the response. This is one step where web PR truly shines, because
measuring activities and sentiment online is much easier than doing so in the
real world. As you will learn in chapter 8, finding, tracking and assessing online
metrics is easy and can be automated with web tools. Where traditional PR
relies on delayed and guesstimated data, web PR benefits from accurate, up-
to-the-minute figures.
6. Follow up. Most PR messages don’t exist in isolation and will be followed up
with subsequent messages that have been influenced by the response and
discussion around the first. This process is much slower in the traditional
sphere than on the web, where short attention spans and the deluge of new
information mean that your brand will be forgotten very quickly.
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standard. While its openness and networking potential are beneficial to public
relations, it is also a challenging landscape to navigate because it has its own rules,
accepted practices and conventions. A PR practitioner must know how to relate
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to the target market in their medium and according to the accepted principles of
interaction. Here are some points to remember.
• Create online social capital. Social capital is the influence, respect and value
that your brand has within your social network. You gain online social capital
by being active and approachable, being frank and honest, interacting with
people personally, sharing useful and interesting content (not only yours)
regularly, and so on. Unlike in traditional media where the medium frames the
content (e.g., an article in a reputable newspaper is by default assumed to
be of equal value), in the online world you must create your reputation and
value from scratch.
• Active interaction. Simply putting your content online will do little to promote
your message. You have to take active steps to share and spread it so that
it stands out in the ever-flowing stream of information. Use the social capital
you have built on your blog, website and social networks to help propagate
your message (you will learn how to use social media in chapter 7). You must
learn how to generate your own online buzz actively.
• Listen more than you speak. On the web, everybody wants to express
their opinions, good and bad. Web PR therefore requires that you spend
considerably more time listening to your audience than you do speaking to
them. The bonus of this approach is that you will get a good sense of popular
sentiment around your brand and marketing strategy.
• Talk about others. In relation to the previous point, a good online PR strategy
doesn’t just involve publishing your own material, since your followers will
quickly get bored with your overt marketing message. To be a valuable
source, you should share content that is related to your industry or field, or
material that your audience will likely be interested in. For example, if you run
a bookshop, source reviews of your most popular titles and share news from
the literary world.
• Be visible. The most important expectation that web users have is that you
are easy to find. A search for your brand name should bring up your website,
the social networking profiles that you are running, articles about you, your
microsites and so on – and all on the first page of results. If you are invisible,
nobody will interact with you and your PR strategy will be for naught.
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A trickier and more desirable outcome is that you appear in search results when
somebody searches for a term related to your brand, such as your type of product
(e.g. “industrial vacuums” rather than your company name). This is an important
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way to gain new customers who are not already familiar with your brand name, but
who are looking for your product or service online. You will learn how to become
visible for non-branded terms related to your business in chapter 6 on search
engine optimisation.
Figure 1: Local technology site Memeburn has excellent visibility on the first
page of search results. However, the site does not appear within the first 50
results for “tech blog” or “technology innovation blog”, which will hamper it
gaining new readers.
• Focus on one channel at a time. The web offers a lot of tools, many of which
you will explore in this course. It is important, however, to plan your online
PR strategy very carefully and to expand slowly. Managing two or three social
networks is doable, but trying to run a dozen will result in confusion andv
negative sentiment (for example, if you cannot keep track of and reply to
comments on all platforms). Once you have created a solid and effective
strategy for one channel, you can branch out and introduce others.
• Register on all platforms. While this may seem to be the opposite advice to
66
or spread misinformation under your guise. You do not need to be active on all
the platforms you register, but make sure that you have secured the profile
name for yourself. A tool like KnowEm will help you do this automatically
(knowem.com). This doesn’t mean you need to sign up to every platform;
pick the ones you want to be visible on.
If you want to automate the process, you can use several online tools, depending
on the nature of your message. If you want to publish a press release, consider
approaching an online press office that will distribute the content to the relevant
sources, or set up a press office at a reputable news site (have a look at the press
service offered by BizCommunity: www.bizcommunity.com/AdvertisingRates-
pressoffice.html). For interesting articles that are indirectly about your brand (for
example, an article on the principles of using colour by a design agency), syndicate
your content to online article directories. Article directories are websites that
allow you to publish your articles, categorise articles by subject area, allow others
67
to take and publish your articles and promote the most popular pieces. A local
example is www.articledirectory.co.za, and many international ones can be found
with a simple web search. You can also make sure that your blog, for example, is
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connected to your Facebook Page and Twitter profile, so that when a new post is
published, it gets pushed to these platforms automatically.
6.1 Monitoring
Monitoring your online reputation involves gathering data from a wide variety
of channels, sources and types of media. Monitoring involves gathering both
quantitative data (data that can be counted, like number of comments, page
views and Likes) and qualitative data (data that is uncountable and subjective, like
the sentiment in a comment or the tone of a question). There are many excellent
online tools that help you manage this process and some are outlined in the next
section and later in chapter 8.
Naturally, you should monitor the conversations on your own platforms, including
social media interactions, comments on your articles and emails. You should also
keep an eye on influential people in your industry and network. Beyond that, you
will need to use specialised tools to find and evaluate mentions of your brand,
product and industry further afield online. The by-product of this process is that
you can find new marketing opportunities in your field because you will be aware
of relevant discussions.
68
prepared to spend and how much media attention your brand gets. Most small
businesses can comfortably manage their online reputations with free Google,
Twitter and Facebook tools. Larger companies with a strong online presence need
to consider a paid-for alternative.
1. You need to have a Google account to create Alerts. If you are already using
Gmail, Google Docs or any other Google application, you already have an
account. If you don’t, visit www.google.com/accounts and create a free one
quickly and simply.
3. You will see the following screen. To create an Alert, type a word into the
“Search terms” box. If you click “Preview results”, you will see a Google search
page for the keyword you entered.
4. You can set the properties of your Alert to customise how you receive
notifications. “Type” refers to the type of media content you want Google
to check; it is recommended that you stick with “Everything” to get the
broadest spectrum of results. “How often” determines how frequently you
receive notifications from Google and “Email length” determines how many
individual search results you will be sent. Finally, “Deliver to” specifies the
email address the Alert will be sent to, and is by default your Gmail address.
69
Tweak these settings to suit your needs, and remember that you can always
edit them later.
6. Google will keep track of your Alert and will send you an email when something
new is posted online. The email will look something like this.
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Both saidWot and Trackur allow you to manage many aspects of your online
reputation from one simple dashboard. SaidWot is a South African service that
focuses specifically on ORM, providing holistic value by not just aggregating data
but by ranking and filtering it based on its relevance, sentiment and credibility.
Trackur is a social-media-specific tool that focuses on finding and summarising
brand mentions on social networking platforms. Both offer a range of services
and pricing plans that you can explore if you are interested in using a paid tool. In
chapter 8, you will learn much more about web analytics and related tools.
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6.3 Managing
Managing your online reputation essentially means responding to comments
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made by the community. Since the web is built on the principle of user-generated
content – media created about your brand by your community – you need to have
a good response strategy in place to address not only your own channels, but also
the peripheral buzz that is created by customers and fans. Always try to keep
your response proportional to the original comment, whether good or bad.
• Promote good comments, but don’t overdo it. Don’t repost every single bit
of praise you get; save that action for the really stellar comments.
• Keep the good comments flowing by adding information, opinions and personal
messages to the conversation.
• If somebody has gone well out of their way to promote your brand, like getting
five friends to sign up for your service, find a way to thank them publicly –
give them a discount, a special present or something else appropriate.
• Recognise that people may have legitimate complaints and take each individual
one seriously on its own merit. It is better to be overly careful about this than
to let a legitimate problem slip.
• Address the problem out in the open, being honest about what is going on,
and take the communication offline as soon as possible. Offer a suitable
compensation in line with what you would normally offer. Refuse to be drawn
into a public argument.
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• Turn the negativity to your advantage by showing that you are genuine about
wanting to help solve the problem; many companies have created extremely
loyal customers by addressing their dissatisfaction quickly and effectively –
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just think of the earlier LOFT example. But try to avoid turning the issue into
an overblown PR stunt, because it will look artificial.
1. Prepare a contact plan for your most important stakeholders and contacts
in case a crisis arises. Even a quick email to your media contacts and digital
distribution partners will make a big difference.
3. Don’t ignore the crisis and hope that no one will notice just because it is
online. Word will quickly spread to the offline media if the problem is serious
enough. It is best to address the problem in a platform that you can monitor
and control to some degree.
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4. Find the places online where the discussions are most active and go straight
to the source. Open up dialogue directly on those platforms and prepare to
field difficult questions and accusations. Be humble and honest but don’t
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be cowed: show what steps you are taking to reverse the impact. If you are
wrong, admit it.
5. Monitor your online reputation closely, using the tools you have chosen. See
what actions are helping the situation and which are fuelling the fire, and
tailor your strategy accordingly.
A reputation crisis is a difficult time but can have a positive spinoff. If your
company shows that it takes criticism seriously and makes considerable strides to
fix the issue, your brand may end up being stronger than ever.
7. Summary
This chapter touched on two important aspects of online communication –
copywriting and web PR. How you present yourself online will determine how likely
customers are to buy your product and service.
• Learned the tricks and techniques of writing good copy for the web in general,
and specifically for your website, email newsletter and blog.
• Read about the techniques and tools of online reputation management and
web PR.
• Learned how to interact with an online audience, both in good times and in
a crisis.
8. References
1. How to write a compelling offer: www.copyblogger.com/kids-eat-free/
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CHAPTER 4
EMAIL MARKETING
Key concepts
Email marketing as a useful tactic, planning, creating and distributing an email campaign,
online applications, creating an email database, dos and don’ts of sending a campaign, key
benefits and drawbacks of email marketing.
CHAPTER 4:
EmAil mARkETing
1. Introduction
When was the last time you hand-wrote a letter to a friend, neighbour, colleague
or family member?
With an estimated 294 billion emails sent each day and over 1.9 billion email users
worldwide, it is no surprise that electronic communication has replaced traditional
alternatives. There are adults today who have never known about or taken part in
traditional forms of business communication.
77
• Learn why email marketing is such a useful marketing tactic (section 3).
• Discover how to plan, create and distribute an email campaign (section 4).
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• Read about the key benefits and drawbacks of email marketing (sections 5
and 6).
Many believe that traditional direct marketing is obsolete, since the readership
of flyers and pamphlets received in the post is often very low unless the come
from well-established brands like Pick ‘n Pay. Marketers have to push through the
clutter to be heard and to stand a chance of building a relationship with long-term
loyal customers. Ultimately, it comes down to what sells; in order to sell, you
need to persuade. Email marketing is the modern-day direct marketing equivalent
and, because it is virtual, it allows a two-way conversation to be initiated and
maintained.
Here is a list of some of the key reasons why marketers should choose email
marketing.
• Quick and simple. It is relatively quick to send an email campaign. Once you
have designed the basic template and content, it is easy to upload them to
an online database and distribute the email campaign with literally the click
of a button.
• Reach. Email is an ideal platform for direct marketing, especially when your
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target market is spread across multiple geographical locations. You are able
to reach thousands of people with one message.
marketing can keep customers informed. Updates, new releases, news and
press releases are all great ways to inform and persuade customers. Most
importantly, customers are kept up to date with the latest news and deals,
such as special offers, online deals and discounts.
4.1. Plan
Before you decide on the design, content and distribution channel, you need to
have a clear plan for your email marketing campaign. Make sure to consider the
following before sending any emails.
• Goals. Determine the goals of the campaign and make sure they are
measurable. For example, if a retail store sends a newsletter to all its current
customers to promote a 10% discount on fleece sweatshirt until the end of
the month, what are the goals? To sell more fleece sweatshirts? To sell other
products? If so, which products, and how are you going to measure whether
the increase in sales was directly related to the newsletter? Defining the
goals upfront makes it easier to determine the success of the campaign.
• Online and offline strategy alignment. Make sure that your online strategy is
aligned with your offline one. If you are selling fleece sweatshirts at 10% off,
make sure that the in-store promotions align with the online discount sales
strategy.
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There are several options, some legal, some less so; this is evident in the
increasing amount of spam in recent years. You can buy a database of contacts
for specific industries online: just search in Google for “email databases” and you
will find several unsolicited options. The international laws regarding spam and
electronic communications vary and it is important to research all the facts before
sending your first campaign. In South Africa, the Electronic Communications and
Transactions Act, 2002 states the following:
• Make sure that you have an “opt out” or “unsubscribe” option on all commercial
emails. Most email service providers will offer this facility. The service provider
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will store your database and will update it automatically when people opt out
or in (see section 7 for more on email marketing service providers).
• You need to be able to identify the source of every contact in your database,
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• When speaking to prospects either by phone or email, ask if they would like
to subscribe to your monthly newsletter.
• Make sure that you have a clear call to action on your website for visitors
to sign up for your next newsletter. Add incentives like competitions and
discounts to encourage people to sign up. Here is an example of a “subscribe
to newsletter” call to action on GetSmarter’s website. Once you have clicked
the banner, you land on the second image and complete three simple fields.
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correspondents that you send out regular emails with updates, news and new
information, and ask if they’d like to receive this communication.
With all of the above sourcing techniques, incentive is the key to success. People
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Do not worry if your database is small when you start off. If you are a start-up
business or do not have an existing client list, your database will grow organically
over time as you attract more customers both through online and offline
techniques, word of mouth, repeat business and new marketing campaigns. This,
in turn, will strengthen brand awareness. One qualified contact is better than five
unqualified contacts.
Most email service providers automatically add recipients to your database when
they sign up through the website call to action mentioned above. However, it is
no surprise that your competitors want to stay informed about the latest events,
news and updates from your company as well. Make sure that someone is screening
your database regularly to weed out any competitors who may have signed up.
Some competitors will use personal email addresses to avoid getting caught. Make
sure you pay close attention to your mailing list.
• Resources. Do you have in-house design and technical staff available to create
and code a custom email template? Do you have outsourced contacts who
could design and build the email for you? How large is the database you are
emailing? Does your database consist predominantly of corporate or personal
email addresses?
These are all questions that need to be answered before you decide on how you
are going to design, build and distribute your email. If you have the design and
technical resources at your disposal and it is not too much cost to the company,
use them. But luckily, today there are many email distribution service providers
that also provide pre-built templates that you can use straight away or customise
to varying degrees, depending on the service provider and your own HTML
knowledge. The next section discusses the different service provider options and
recommends applications to use for email campaigns.
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rules about what is and is not spam. The goal of any email is to reach the desired
person. Spam filers are not very friendly to email marketing campaigns. Spam
filters are on every email client and are there to prevent spam mail cluttering the
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inbox. You need to understand how spam filers work and then avoid some common
mistakes to ensure that your email reaches your recipients.
• Use HTML, no CSS, only tables. If you are not a technical person, don’t worry:
all you need to know is that HTML is the term used for the code that developers
use to build websites and email templates. There are good and bad ways to
write code. It’s important to stick to the rules of the game; otherwise, search
engines, web browsers and email clients will not like your emails very much.
For those who know a little HTML, try to code your newsletter in neat, clean
W3C-compliant HTML code (www.w3.org) using inline styles. Writing code in
Microsoft Word and then exporting the code to HTML is not professional and
spam filters do not like it as Microsoft Word carries special characters across.
• Images. Avoid using too many images and not enough HTML; spam filters
cannot read images and become suspicious of the email’s contents. Add “alt”
tags to all images and make sure that they are saved for the web (more on
this in chapter 6). Avoid using the .png image format. Create a plain-text
version of your email as well (most email applications create this for you),
just in case someone cannot download your images – at least they can still
read your email content and links.
• CAPITALS. Do not use capital letters, especially in the subject line. This is
considered the online equivalent of shouting.
• Test. Do not use the word “test” in the subject line, especially when sending
a test email to multiple colleagues or to the client. Make sure that your
system administrator also knows that you are sending test emails so that
they can whitelist your email service provider’s (ESP’s) server (so that your
email is not presumed to be spam and blocked). Most ESPs should be able to
explain how to whitelist their servers.
ESP
An email service provider (ESP) is a service that hosts email marketing services
on servers that are specifically optimised for this purpose. While you control your
email marketing account, create the content and send out emails using a web
browser, the ESP’s servers and internet connections do all the technical work.
ESPs are also referred to as email marketing applications. You usually pay for
this service, either per month or per email recipient. These applications provide
a step-by-step process for creating email templates without you having to know
any HTML. Read more on ESPs in section 7.
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which automatically removes the email address from your database so that you
don’t get reported again.
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1. “From” email. This is the first thing people see when they receive an email.
Deciding whether to open an email or not is often completely based on the
“from” email address. Make sure it is recognisable by the reader by using
the company name (e.g. marketing@getsmarter.co.za or info@getsmarter.
co.za). Use a branded email address and not your regular Google or Yahoo
account.
2. Subject line. Apart from being inbox friendly, make sure that your subject
line contains facts, specific details about the email, reasons for the email and
sufficient incentives for the recipient to open and read it. Attraction sells.
Entice the reader with a compelling subject line (e.g. “Woolworths November
Newsletter: Excellent summer specials”). Make sure that your company name
appears in the subject line if you have not included it in the “from” email. Do
not make the subject line too sensational (e.g. “Massive Sale” or “Incredible
offer”): this may arouse suspicion and cause your email to be blocked by
email clients that have aggressive spam filters.
• Address the recipient. If you have their name and company in your database,
feed it through into the email to make it more personal: “Dear {name}, I see
that you work for {company} in the {category} industry. My new offer may
interest you.” (If you are sending a targeted email to one industry that is
identified in your database, add that industry.)
• Be specific. State who you are and why you are emailing in the first line or two
of copy. Keep your message to the point and professional.
• Images. Visuals are always a hassle since many email clients shrink images to
keep the file size down. Not everyone is able to download images and a slow
internet connection can make the process time consuming and frustrating.
Newsletter templates usually include some images, like logos, but use them
sparingly. You should still be able to understand the main message of the
email without seeing the images.
• Top to bottom. Put the most valuable content at the top of the message in
case a recipient only previews the email instead of opening it.
• Back to your website. Always think of ways to direct readers back to your
website after they have read the email. Try adding in a few hyperlinks to
relevant pages on your website or blog.
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• Opt out. Always add a “unsubscribe” or “opt out” link at the bottom of the
message text. By law, readers should always be able to unsubscribe from an
email at any time. The process of unsubscribing should be easy and quick.
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Most email service providers offer to add these facilities to emails, which then
appear automatically.
• Text only. When sending an HTML email campaign, always send a “text-only”
email option as well. A text-only email is literally an email that contains only
text and links. Most email service providers automatically generate a text
version from your HTML email, but make sure you read through it before
sending to make sure the formatting is correct.
• Name of company
• Website URL
• Contact numbers
• Email address
4.4. Distribute
Gone are the days of sending bulk emails from your personal Outlook or Gmail
email account. There are three reasons why this is not an efficient way of sending
email campaigns.
3. Unless you are a design and coding expert, it is extremely difficult to design
a professional email using your email client.
4. You will battle with credibility because spammers use free mail accounts to
send unsolicited emails.
Luckily, there are several email service providers (ESPs) available that provide
a simple step-by-step process for designing, writing and distributing email
campaigns. Examples include MailChimp (www.mailchimp.com), Campaign Monitor
(www.campaignmonitor.com), Graphic Mail (www.graphicmail.co.za) and Constant
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• Improve email delivery. The best ESPs maintain their own anti-spam protection
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and build a strong reputation with internet service providers (ISPs), so most
emails will easily pass ISP-level spam filters, even with a new account. If there
are any delivery issues, the ESP and ISP technical support teams will work
together to ensure email delivery.
• Mailing list management. All professional ESPs provide mailing list management.
All contacts can be imported and managed in the ESP.
• Legal compliance. ESPs are all familiar with the spam laws in their country or
region (depending on where the ESP is registered) and they ensure that their
clients are all compliant. Every email will have a one-click “unsubscribe” link
to ensure that every recipient has the choice to opt out at their convenience.
• Tracking and reporting. ESPs have their own tracking and reporting functions
as well as offering the ability to integrate with Google Analytics (more
on Google Analytics in module 8). You are able to report on click-through
rates, bounce rates, forwarded emails, which pages were opened most, who
unsubscribed and much more. (More on this in section 4.5 of this module.)
• Free. Most ESPs offer a free service to small businesses. Prices increase
with the number of contacts that you have on your mailing list. See email-
marketing-service-review.toptenreviews.com for the top ten ESP providers
and their pricing breakdowns.
• Accessible anywhere. ESPs are all web-based applications and can therefore
be used anywhere in the world. You do not need to be at your office to send
an email campaign.
If you have new content to write about, once a week is sufficient; never resend
the same content just to make up your weekly email quota. Spam filters will not
like this. A monthly newsletter has an obvious frequency; however, make sure that
the newsletter is sent on the same day and roughly the same time every month.
As with print circulations, readers like consistency.
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Here are a few terms of the trade that will help you understand the reporting
features of your ESP:
• Bounce rate. The percentage of email addresses that did not receive the
email. A “hard bounce” means that the email was sent to an “undeliverable”
email. A “soft bounce” is when someone’s email account was temporarily
unavailable; this usually happens when a server is busy or the account is too
full. The lower the bounce rate, the better. On average, you can expect about
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10% of your recipients to bounce, but this does vary across industries. Here
is a list of industry benchmarks for email statistics by MailChimp:
www.mailchimp.com/articles/email_marketing_benchmarks_for_small_
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business
• Open rate. The percentage of recipients who have opened their email at least
once (emails sent minus bounces). There is no guarantee that people have
actually read the email, but at least they have opened it. Here is a list of the
open rate trends by MailerMailer: www.mailermailer.com/resources/metrics/
open-rates.rwp
• Unique opens rate. This measure is the “open rate” excluding duplicate opens
by the same person, and is a more realistic and reliable static.
• Click-through rate (CTR). The number of links to your website divided by the
number of opened emails. Make sure that there is a good match between the
content on your email and the target market who receives it so that they are
more likely to click through to your website.
• Always test your newsletter before sending it. Make sure you send it to
multiple colleagues and your client if you are emailing on their behalf. You will
be surprised how often you will miss a spelling or HTML error.
• Check your content and spam score. Check whether your email distributor
has a built-in content checker, and run your email through it. Here are two
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• Plan how you want to segment your mailing list for future emails. Think about
how you would like to segment your mailing list, for example by industry or
occupation. Make sure that you continually update your mailing list when you
receive new personal information. Check to see that your signup form asks
for all the information you need for future segmenting. Depending on the
ESP, you might even be able to send information directly from your content
management system to the ESP mailing list.
• Plan, plan, plan. Always plan your calendar and your content. Sending a
weekly email needs to be planned long in advance. Writing content, designing
templates and segmenting mailing lists all need to be planned. Committing to
a weekly or monthly campaign will only succeed if all parties involved know
what needs to be done when. Knowing what type of content you would like
to include (e.g. calendar of events, latest news, staff updates, competition
and promotions) always helps with planning.
• Always be present. Especially for your first email campaign, make sure that
you are present, preferably in the office, when the email is sent. Typos,
broken links, distorted layout and server outages are common occurrences
that require human contact to manage.
• Track, track, track. The only way to measure the real ROI of your email
campaign is to track and analyse everything relevant to your campaign’s
success. As discussed under section 4.4, most ESPs have their own report
features, plus you can integrate with Google Analytics to measure your
email’s success and its direct effect on your website’s statistics. Make sure
that you know what your goals are before sending an email so that you know
what information to look for, as the statistics can be overwhelming at first.
• A/B testing. It is very difficult at first to know how your audience will respond
to certain imagery, content or promotional material. Testing different versions
of your email is a critical process for ensuring that you maximise your success
and learn from mistakes. In A/B testing, you send a slightly different email
to a sample of your target audience, see how they respond and then send
another variation to see if there is any difference. A few ideas for elements
to change:
o Subject line
o Imagery
o Product selection
o Headline
o Promotional offer
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spam folder. Make sure that your emails are professionally checked by content
and spam checkers; this will increase the likelihood of delivering a successful
campaign.
• Free, but not free. Make sure that your ESP will not display advertisements in
your email – this can be very distracting and has the potential to negatively
impact on your brand image.
• Terms of service. When signing up for an account with an ESP, make sure that
you read the “terms of service” very carefully, as local South African laws
may be different from those of the host country of the ESP, often the US.
• Backing up. Make sure that you back up all contacts in the ESP mailing list to
a local server or computer regularly. Most ESPs allow you to export contacts
to Excel. Make sure that you save the login details for your ESP account
somewhere safe.
• Avoid being bounced. Emails are received by many different ISPs, firewalls and
webmail systems, which all have different spam filters and email preferences.
For example, many large corporations have very strict firewalls and spam
filters that may prevent emails arriving at the recipient. It is therefore critical
that email marketing is not the only online technique used to communicate
with customers, but rather one element of a holistic marketing approach.
7. Applications
There is a wide variety of email service providers to choose from, each with their
own pros and cons. For the purpose of this course, we have outlined three leading
ESPs below. Before choosing an ESP, make sure you research all the options
available.
3. Creating emails
4. Sending emails
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• Private vs. shared IP. Check whether the ESP has a shared or private IP
address. An IP address is a number that identifies a website: the equivalent
of a postal address. Most domain names can be translated into IP addresses.
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• Email storage. The amount of disk space that ESPs provide you to store your
images, attachments and emails varies. Some ESPs charge for more space.
• Tutorials and customer support. If you are new to email marketing, support
and online tutorials are very helpful. All ESPs should provide both services,
but many don’t. Do your homework and investigate customer support before
choosing an ESP.
• Infrastructure. Make sure that your ESP has high-speed internet connections
through more than one source to ensure reliable connections all the time. You
don’t want to have connectivity and server problems when an email needs to
be distributed.
• Pricing. Some ESPs are free, some have a monthly fee and some charge per
recipient. Think about how many emails you will send now and in 6 months.
Choose the plan that meets your current and future needs.
• Free trial without a buy-in. Do not sign up with a provider that doesn’t offer
a month-to-month subscription. You need the flexibility to change providers
if needed without being tied into a contract.
• Easy to use. How tech savvy is the person who will be in charge of email
marketing campaigns? Do they know how to write HTML and use PhotoShop?
Luckily, there are many ESPs that offer a simple step-by-step process that
will make email campaigns painless, which means that you won’t have to rely
on technical support too much.
• Pause feature. The best ESPs should allow you to pause or terminate a
campaign in the middle of the delivery process and continue it at a later
stage. As your company grows, so does your database, and this feature will
become very important.
• Integrate with other marketing software. The best ESPs will provide the
capability of integrating with other marketing applications like Google
Analytics (more on Google Analytics in chapter 8).
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up to 500 recipients). They have unlimited image hosting, but they don’t
have conversion tacking. You pay for custom HTML templates, or you can
build your own using their simple step-by-step process. They do not have
detailed reports but they can integrate with Google Analytics. They have
good online customer support and tutorials but no FAQ section.
Refer back to the list of “things to consider” before choosing an ESP, and then
have a look at this link, which clearly outlines the differences between the two
tools: www.crmreports.com/index.php/constant-contact-vs-icontact.html.
8. Summary
People who are unfamiliar with email marketing may wonder what all the excitement
about sending emails to customers is about. Isn’t there enough spam in my inbox?
• Learned what email marketing is and why it is such a valuable tool in your
internet marketing repertoire.
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• Learned how to create and send an email marketing campaign, using the best
tools for your purpose.
• Saw what you should avoid doing when email marketing, and what some of
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9. References
1. The history and evolution of email: www.focus.com/images/view/7404
7. Smashing Magazine: Design and build an email newsletter without losing your
mind: www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/01/19/design-and-build-an-email-
newsletter-without-losing-your-mind
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CHAPTER 5
ONLINE ADVERTISING
AND PPC
Key concepts
Difference between online and offline advertising, free vs paid advertising, online
advertising techniques, appropriate use of online advertising techniques, creating a
Facebook ad.
CHAPTER 5:
OnlinE AdVERTising
And PPc
1. Introduction
What is advertising? Isn’t advertising just another word for marketing? Many people
get these terms confused and use them interchangeably. In reality, advertising is
just one component of the marketing process. Marketing itself is a mix of activities
intended to bring buyers and sellers together in a mutually beneficial environment.
In order to bring these two parties together, marketers plan, execute and control
a variety of activities, both offline and online. Advertising is a (usually paid)
placement or promotion of a product in a public arena to current or prospective
customers with the intent to promote and sell. Advertising, accompanied with
other marketing initiatives such as direct marketing, PR, sales and promotion
strategies, works to drive customers to your product and increase sales.
With the arrival of the internet, marketers have a new medium to spread the
word on, through an “integrated communication approach” that achieves
increased brand awareness and market reach. This chapter explores the current
debate around traditional versus new media and how the internet is changing the
advertising arena. With the increase in online advertising, the tools and tactics
are evolving rapidly, shifting from impersonal mass messages to more targeted
and personal initiatives. Ultimately, advertising (both on and offline) is a relatively
affordable marketing tactic that, combined with additional techniques, has the
potential to be a very good revenue generator.
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New media presents the amalgamation of traditional media (film, print, music,
images, text) and digital technology, specifically the internet. Concepts like real
time, on demand, democratic interaction and relationship building all personify this
new media consumer environment. Many traditional media have been forced to “go
digital” in order to survive this dramatic shift in creation, publishing, distribution
and consumption of new media.
The digital revolution has changed the shape of media for good and those players
in old media are slowly coming to terms with the fact that the digital age in not
going anywhere, except further down the road of virtual reality. With the shift
from old to new, advertisers are embracing new media with open arms.
• Lead time. It can take weeks, if not months, before an offline advert can
be screened or printed. Online information can be published immediately
and changed regularly. There is little to no lead time. There are also no
geographical limitations.
• Quality exposure. When you drive past a billboard or watch an ad break during
your favourite series, you are exposed to an ad but do not necessary have
any interest in the product being sold. Online, viewers only click on a banner
or a Google advert if they are interested. Online advertising has the potential
to be more targeted.
• Freedom. Online users have more control over what they want to see and
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when; offline viewers, listeners or readers have no control over whether they
want to listen to a radio ad, view a commercial or read a billboard on the
highway. Freedom of choice enables the customer to choose whether to
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• Reach. The internet crosses global boundaries. No matter where in the world
you are, one ad has the potential to reach thousands of people with just one
click.
• Cost. Provided you understand how to manage budgets, set a limit for online
ad spend and target visitors accurately, online advertising can be a much
more cost effective and measurable medium than traditional advertising.
There is nothing cheap about magazine advertising or shooting a 30-second
commercial. Production costs can easily run into several hundred thousand
rand for one commercial.
This module explores three very different online advertising arenas: free, paid,
and the dying and slightly unethical. It is always good to know about your online
options. There is never one overarching solution, so rather consider using an
amalgamation of techniques to promote, attract and convert prospects into long-
term customers – the nature of online advertising is that you can very quickly see
if an ad is performing or not, and change it or move your budget to something
that is more effective. Relationships, especially with customers, take time, money
and strategy to build. Use these techniques wisely.
4.1. Free
Before banner ads, PPC and sponsorship are discussed, it is important to learn
about the free online advertising tools available. Free advertising allows you to
increase traffic to your site, inform search engines of your existence, build a
network of referral sites and spread your brand virally.
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forward and share, the better – provided the readers find their way back to your
website, brand and your bottom line. Writing articles and press releases about
your latest products and company news is another way to increase exposure
about your company, increase brand awareness and hopefully traffic. Linking back
to your website from this content means search engines will see your site as being
more credible, and will be more likely to rank it higher up on search results pages
for related queries. There are several content distributor websites that are happy
to republish content on their websites by adding it to their database of articles for
a small fee, or even for free. When searching for content distributors, make sure
that they reach your target market, are not sabotaged with banner ads, are free
and are legitimate.
• Do not submit the same article to multiple sites. Each content distributor
should have a different article. Search engines do not trust duplicate content
and will not rank you website highly.
• Make sure that you complete all information in the “about the author” section.
Include the web address to your website so that people can link back to your
website. Search engines such as Google will find your content and index your
site.
URL indexing
Indexing is like a filing system. Google will crawl every page of your website, which
means it will read all content and index it according to the keywords on each page.
When someone searches for a keyword, Google searches its database of websites
for the most relevant content. Google excels above all search engines in speed
and accuracy of indexing websites.
• Follow the submission guidelines. If you have submitted your site and do
not believe that it has been indexed, post a message of their forum (www.
resource-zone.com/forum).
• Be wary of multiple submissions of the same website. If you submit too many
entries for the same site, editors might flag your site as spam.
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build a great website. Make sure that all meta-data is added (discussed further in
chapter 6), content is well written and the site structure and web address are well
thought out before submitting to any directories and search engines.
• www.ezinearticles.com
• www.spin2submit.co.za
• www.GoArticles.com
• www.dmoz.org
• Manually submit your URL to search engines like Yahoo and Google (www.
google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl).
• Use a one-stop shop. Add your URL to one website that will submit your URL
to multiple search engines (for example, www.addme.com or www.addpro.
com).
Note: Indexing your website does not guarantee a high ranking in search results
– your website will not necessarily come up on the first page. There are several
things you will need to do (that you will learn in chapter 6) that will help you with
your search ranking.
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• Set up a live feed on Yahoo or Google so that your site is crawled regularly.
• Add a link to your blog in your email signature, email marketing campaigns
and any other marketing material.
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• Add an RSS feed that people can subscribe to. An RSS (rich site summary) is
a link with the subject line and date of each blog entry. People can add this
feed to their site so that any updates to your blog are automatically updated
on their site too. This in an excellent way of generating backlinks to your blog.
• Write comments on other people’s blogs and then make sure you add a link
back to your website.
The reverse also applies for your website. You want as many visits to your site as
possible from as many sources as possible. You do not have to be an online retail
giant to have an affiliate network; there are other website where you can pay to
have you URL listed as an affiliate. This way, you will benefit from links coming
to your site from these affiliate networks. You can even find loyal customers who
are willing to have a link to your site on theirs; this is one of the easiest and best
ways to create backlinks. A good example of this is a web design agency. Every
time a new website is launched, a press release is written about the launch and the
news page and social networks spread the word. All these channels help distribute
information about the company and its product offerings.
Here are a few local and international examples of affiliate networks you can join
to promote your website and generate more inbound links to your site:
• www.freebielist.com
• www.affiliate-program.amazon.com
• www.ebaypartnernetwork.com/files/hub/en-US/index.html
• www.offerforge.com
• www.trafficsynergy.com
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Note: The more active you are online, the more search engines will crawl your site
or blog and the more favourably you will appear to search engines because you
have good-quality content that is always current. Remember that advertising is all
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about getting the message out to a large audience and informing customers about
your products or service. Sometimes the more subtle methods of advertising reap
the best rewards.
4.1.5 Sponsorship
Sponsorship is not free (there usually is some commission involved), but can
provide a good opportunity to increase brand awareness through online affiliation
with an organisation like an industry partner or related non-profit, especially in the
healthcare industry. Make sure that your customers also trust the organisation
you are sponsoring and, through their goodwill, you should receive increased
brand exposure. Text links, banners and logos are the most common types of
sponsorship. This can be a good way to promote your products or services through
another company’s websites, newsletters, events and competitions.
PPC campaigns have become a popular advertising technique in recent years for
three main reasons:
1. They are targeted to keywords, so only people actively looking for what your
business offers will be shown the ads.
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tracking codes that can be added onto URLs included in the ad.
3. They are more cost effective than other advertising techniques like TV
commercials, banner ads and print ads, because you’re only paying when
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• Research what keywords your target audience is using to search for your
products and services.
• Track all click sources and continually monitor and update your campaigns.
• Watch out for click fraud by keeping a careful eye on competitors and
analytics.
CPM: Cost per thousand impressions (e.g. R50 per 10 000 impressions means a
CPM of R5).
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CTR: Click-through rate. The number of clicks divided by the number of impressions.
Your CTR is usually higher than your CPM.
Conversion rate (CR): The number of actions (or goals) completed divided by the
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number of clicks received. For example, you set up a goal for “signing up for the
newsletter” on the home page of your website. If ten people click your ad to go to
the home page and two people sign up for the newsletter, your CR is 20%.
Landing page: The destination page on your website that viewers are sent to once
they click on your ad. This does not have to be the homepage. For example, www.
news24.com is the home page but www.news24.com/world would be your landing
page for a sponsored link promoting world news on News24. You can create a
dedicated landing page to send paid advertising to, to make sure those visitors
convert or do what you want them to do.
PPA: Pay per action. Payment is only made once someone takes the prescribed
action – makes a phone call, completes the contact form or makes a purchase.
PPA costs are higher than PPC because you have more prequalified prospects by
taking action.
ROI: Return on investment. The profit made divided by the cost of the PPC
campaign. It’s best to look at the entire campaign rather than individual products.
1. Plan
Before setting up a PPC campaign, answer the following questions:
• What am I selling?
• What are my competitors doing online and where are they advertising?
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• What are my website goals? Sell online? Educate the market? Increase brand
awareness? Build the email marketing database through newsletter signups?
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2. Research
Once you have planned your campaign, the next step is to research your target
audience’s online behaviour. There are specialists who spent hours researching
the right mix of keywords for a PPC campaign, but as a beginner is it important
to understand the fundamentals of what makes a well-targeted keyword. The
two website references below are excellent tools for this type of research. When
selecting keywords for the first time, make a list of all the words that are relevant
to your company and your products. Once you have done some research, your list
should be reduced to a maximum of 20 keywords or phrases. The key to any PPC
campaign is to keep it extremely targeted. AdWords keyword targeting: adwords.
google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
Cost per impression (CPM) is the cost per thousand impressions. An impression
in the online world is every time a page that displays your ad is downloaded to
someone’s computer. Every time an ad is displayed, you are charged, whether
someone clicks on it or not. Often, your ad is displayed far below the fold (you
have to scroll down to see it). You are only charged for CPC when someone clicks
on your advert.
First, type in your URL (the web address of your website, like www.computicket.
co.za), add a few keywords and search for relevant or similar phrases that relate
to your product. Make sure to use the “Advanced Search” function: this helps you
narrow your research by country and language. Google will then generate a list of
suggested keywords.
Each keyword will have a level of competitiveness and a global and monthly search
level. The more competitive the keyword, the more you will probably have to bid
(and pay) for a keyword in order to get a high Google ranking in sponsored links.
Remember to be specific. “Restaurant” is a much more general term than “Chinese
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restaurant Cape Town”. The second keyword phrase identifies location, category
(what you are selling) and type. Although there will be lower search volumes for
more specific phrases, people searching with these phrases will be more qualified
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or relevant leads, since they’ll be more closely matched to the product or service
you’re offering.
signup12.marketingsolutions.yahoo.com/signupui/signup/startSignup.do
adwords.google.com/select/AdTargetingPreviewTool
Once you have selected you keywords and created your AdWords campaign, use
the preview tool to see where your ads would rank when someone types in certain
phrases. This tool is not 100% accurate, but does give you a good estimate of
keyword accuracy.
The most important of all PPC decisions is your choice of keywords for your
campaign. Below is an example of a list of keywords and their current campaign
performance statistics:
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As discussed, only bid on words that are extremely relevant to your business and
product offerings.
www.wordtracker.com/find-the-best-keywords
Two examples of PPC budget and ROI calculators to help you plan your budget:
• Don’t bid to reach first position. As long as your ad is above the fold (usually
in position two to four) you should get qualified clicks. Qualified clicks are
clicks from people who are actually interested in your services or products.
These clicks qualify to become future customers. The more optimised and
targeted your PPC ad, the lower the chance of people clicking on your ad by
mistake or assuming you are selling something else.
• Timing is everything. Consider what day of the week and what time of day
most of your customers will be online and restrict your ads to be displayed
within these time constraints. For example, if you are a take-out restaurant,
you want your ad to be displayed at lunchtime when people are most hungry.
• Geographic limits. Make sure you are specific about where the people you
want to target are. If your customers are only in South Africa, set South
Africa as a geographical limitation. Look at your past sales statistics and see
where most of your sales have originated from. Facebook Ads has a very
detailed target-selecting process: you can be as specific as gender, age and
interests (more on this at the end of the chapter).
• Tracking. If you have a technical or development team who can assist you,
ask them to set up basic tracking codes on all major calls to action, such
as the newsletter signup thank you page, contact form thank you page and
purchase thank you page. By adding a small piece of code, you can track the
source of the visitor and identify all click-through visitors. This will help you
determine your cost per conversion and overall ROI.
• Be tough. If a keyword does not convert, get rid of it. You will be amazed
at how many words you think match your company and product offerings
perfectly but do not convert into qualified clicks, especially if you are selling
online.
• Do not bid more than the average sale. Do not spend more than 10% of
the average sale amount on advertising. If you presume that on average 2%
of people who click through to your site will buy and if your average sale is
R200, limit advertising to R20. Divide R20 by 50 to get an average bid of 40
cents per click. This does fluctuate depending on your marketing strategy.
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• Include negative keywords. Avoid people clicking on your ad when they are
looking for irrelevant search terms. Search for terms that you don’t want to
be associated with your ad. For example, if you are selling “luxury furniture”,
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Make sure you have a clear outline of who you want to target and why – factors
like location, language, keywords, additional demographics, landing pages and
action goals.
Most ads follow the same content formula: headline, two lines of text, visible URL
and unseen landing page URL. Each search engine sets its own length for each
line but, roughly speaking, keep your heading under 25 characters and each line
of text under 30 characters. There are also additional rules governing word use
and punctuation, so make sure you read the rules of whichever search engine you
are using before you write an ad. Below is an example of a Google text ad for an
overland safari company:
Headline
Writing headlines takes a lot of time, patience and practice. Try a variety of
headlines and do some A/B testing (also known as split testing) to see which one
works best. The goal is to achieve a high CTR. Google allows you to run multiple
ads using the same search term, which makes it easy to A/B test ad variations
(only one ad will appear at a time for any one of your keywords).
• Always ensure that headlines are attention grabbing and not generic
• Avoid using small words like “the”, “in” and “a” as they take up characters
and don’t mean anything to Google
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• Consider the exact needs of your target market and then offer a solution in
the heading
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• If you have used a question in the header, answer the question in one of the
description lines
• If you have several ads for the same product, focus on different benefits or
product offerings. This is a good idea for A/B testing. Different words appeal
to different audiences.
• Always use active voice and second person (“you” instead of “we”) and
imperative verbs (e.g. absorb, enjoy, fly, buy, relax or satisfy)
Landing pages
Remember that landing pages do not have to be your website’s home page but
can be any destination page that will fulfil an action or goal. For example, if the
description line offers a “10% discount for African safari tours”, the landing page
will be a page that explains the 10% discount in detail and tells visitors how to
book. Although your landing pages can differ, your display URL should stay the
same. Always choose a landing page that has content that is the most closely
related to the content of your ad. For example, if your ad describes a specific
product, the corresponding product page on your website would be a better
landing page option than your home page, which is much more general. You set
an expectation with your advert, so don’t disappoint the potential client by taking
them to a page that isn’t completely relevant.
Think about a supermarket: you don’t go to the front of the store for bread and
milk, you go straight to the back of the store to the diary products (landing page),
then you visit the bread section (another section of the website) and finally you
pay at the cashier (home page – front of the store). Along the way to the cashier,
you might pick up a few other goods you had not intended on buying (e.g. sign up
for newsletter, buy an extra item online, visit several other pages before you leave
the website). The goal of any landing page is to convert a click into a customer
and maximise the user experience so that a new customer converts to a return
visitor. It is always good to try and think like a customer: where would you expect
to land once you clicked on the ad?
• Add the keywords of your PPC ad to the meta-tags of the landing page.
• If you are selling a product, the landing page should always be the product
detail page.
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• Never mislead the customer. The landing page should be the obvious next
step – buy, more information, sign up; whatever the PPC ad is using as a
promotion tactic.
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5. Delivering results
Building a successful PPC campaign takes both time and money. It does not happen
overnight but can be very rewarding. Make sure that you track all campaigns,
monitor your budgets, bids and traffic closely and, most importantly, do not use PPC
in isolation. Search engine optimisation is essential for generating natural search
engine ranking and, in the long term, is more rewarding than paying for sponsored
links. Once again, combining PPC with other online advertising techniques such
as directories and affiliate networks as well as offline promotional initiatives will
provide better results all round. Also don’t hold yourself back if you see that your
ads are not working, change and modify them until you see results or consider
using another tool if this doesn’t work for you.
Click fraud
Whether you are a beginner at PPC advertising or someone who has been building
successful campaigns for years, it is critical that you understand what click fraud
is and what the different types of fraud are so that you know what to look out
for and can report any misconduct. Click fraud is when a person (predominantly
low-cost workers in China and India) or a computer (online bots and automated
software) imitates a legitimate online user and clicks on an ad for the purpose of
generating an increase in cost per click. The main incentive with click fraud is to
click on rivals’ links and increase their advertising spend. Search engines should
refund you if you detect and can prove click fraud.
According to ClickForensics’ Click Fraud Index, the overall rate of click fraud on
PPC in Q1 2010 was 17.4%; this represents an increase from previous results
in Q4 and Q3 of 2009. The possible increase in click fraud may be attributed to
the increase in sophisticated fraud schemes identified. One of the most prevalent
forms of fraud is called a “publisher collision scheme”, where a fraudster tries to
mimic legitimate users by spreading bots across computers to generate a random
pattern of traffic.
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It is important to remember here that Facebook ads are served (shown) to people
on Facebook who have the keywords you have listed on their profile – they are not
searching for them but being shown them based on what they have already listed.
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Bid type
Cost per click (CPC) and cost per thousand impressions (CPM) – a good place
to start if you are new to PPC is with CPC, using the suggested bid range. Some
keywords are more competitive and therefore have a higher suggested bid range.
Note that if your ad has a low CTR and number of impressions, switch to the CPM
bid type for a while to ensure that Facebook does display your ad. Once you start
getting traffic and impressions increase, change back to CPC.
4.3. Banner ads: The good, the bad and the ugly
Banner ad. A rectangular image that can be placed anywhere on a website. Banners
can be one image, image and text, rotating images (.gif files) and even Flash. The
goal of any banner ad is to entice people to click through to the website.
In 1994, the first banner ad was placed on HotWired, Wired Magazine’s former
website. It was purchased by a cellular network provider AT&T and read, “Have
you ever clicked your mouse right HERE? You will.” Many people started clicking
on ads more for curiosity rather than incentivised advertising. (You will remember
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At first the CTR of banner ads was high, on average 78%, until the market crash in
2000. Google and GoTo.com (now Yahoo Search) then turned banner advertising
into a performance-based model; ads started being valued by CTR rather than
number of impressions. Creating unique and compelling incentives like playing
games and testing your IQ, banner ads did have an element of fascination for the
curious mind. Today, the click-through rate of banner ads has dropped to less than
1%. Are they dead? No, but marketers have to become much more original with
their banner advertising, delivering ads only to people they really want to reach –
almost following the PPC trend of recent years: targeting is everything.
The banner ad (essentially display advertising online) still exists today but has been
devalued by the overabundance of publishers’ inventory, flogging ad networks. CTR
is not as critical as brand exposure since supply eventually completely outgrows
demand. eMarketer reported in 2009 that “ad networks slash inventory prices up
to 90%.” With the price crashing, the quality of banners has also gone downhill,
becoming more distracting to online users. People have even gone so far as to
install banner ad, cookie and pop-up blocking software like AdAnnihilator (www.
adannihilator.com) to stop banner ads interrupting their online experience. Banner
ads are not altogether bad advertising but they do need to become more targeted.
• Words. Choose the right keywords to entice and persuade viewers to click
your ad.
• Position. Where are you going to position the ad on the page? Think about
your target market and their needs. What are you selling? How can you make
the most appropriate connection between the content on the page and your
banner ad? The more relevant the content on the page is to your ad, the
more targeted the traffic is to whatever you are selling. For example, the
BizCommunity digital section displays an ad for “The digital edge internet
radio show”.
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and planning weekend activities? If you are going to display ads on a specific
website regularly, make sure you make design changes to your banner ad to
improve the CTR by keeping the ad fresh for the online users. If you are a car
dealer, www.carmag.co.za is a good website to display your ad.
• Money. How much are you willing to spend on banner ads? The pricing model
also affects this decision. Instead of PPC, try to use CPA (cost per acquisition)
instead to place banner ads. CPA directly influences the profit of the site on
which the ad is being advertised, so cooperation in providing good results is
more likely with CPA that traditional PPC. As with all online advertising, first
calculate your overall budget for paid advertising and then decide how you
are going to split this across different advertising techniques.
Note: The more trafficked sites, like news websites, sport and entertainment
pages, will charge more for banner ads than new portals. Keep an eye out for
new advertising platforms: you might be able to get a more affordable rate
as they will be looking to build inventory.
• Tracking. As with PPC, you cannot track conversion or ROI unless you track
all banner ad traffic. Always add a tracking source code to all banner ads.
Tracking can become quite complex. Analysing where visitors are coming from
and where they click on your ad is valuable user behaviour information. Over
time, just studying your customers’ online behaviour will provide invaluable
information that will help target banner ads more accurately.
• Frequency. Keep track of the frequency with which ads are displayed
compared to the amount of clicks received in a specific campain. What would
cause a low CTR?
o Bad design
• Splash pages. Splash pages are like a front door to a house: they are the
“welcome” page to a website and are usually very graphic and built in Flash
or JavaScript. The problem with splash pages, especially graphic-intensive
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pages, is that people with slow internet connections or limited bandwidth will
not be able to load the page. Some marketers believe that the use of splash
pages is an excellent promotion technique to boost banner ad CTR. This is not
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correct. Banner ads should always point people to the home page or a landing
page that supports the call to action on the ad, and not to other information
you want the user to see.
• Rich media. The use of Flash or JavaScript to make a banner ad animated with
quality images and even sound – this is rich media and is believed to increase
the CTR of banner ads. However, this trend has been overused and websites
are becoming cluttered with rich media banner ads, often making it hard to
read the content on the website.
• Size. There is a variety of banner ad sizes. If you would like to see the most
common sizes, have a look at www.theoremcreations.com/ppc/bannersizes.
php. Before deciding on a size, visit the websites you would like to display your
ads on, see where most of their ads are displayed and the prices associated
with each size. Remember that it’s more important to make the ad relevant,
personal and targeted than big and noticeable. Skyscrapers (120 x 600
pixels) are the most common banner size and are located on the right hand
side of the website, but they are also more expensive than square banners
(250 x 250 pixels) or small rectangular banners (120 x 60 pixels), which are
smaller and can be positioned anywhere on the page.
• Humour. People want to be entertained. The web can often feel like information
overload. Unique ads with funny calls to action and brand associations may
have more success than rotating imagery and flashy execution.
4.3.2 Examples
1. KFC banner ad (animated banner)
KFC “pump the burger” banner in 2008. The goal was to encourage viewers to
pump the burger up – every time you buy a supersized meal you would get a
discount voucher. Fast food activists were not very happy with this fast food
promotion technique.
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The Toyota Rush promoted its unexpected thrill, “break free from the mundane
city life and drive the Toyota Rush” campaigns through the jungle-like background
turning into the city.
Shot 1
Shot 2
The banner is simple, sticks to the facts and is positioned in the “mobile” section
of www.BizCommunity.com.
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• ISP ads. Internet service providers can insert advertising into their customers’
browsers and placing another layer of advertisements on top of the actual
ads on the page – essentially two-timing their customers. If this happens to
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you, switch to a new ISP as soon as possible (for the technically inclined, this
technique is called Jaiku conversation). ISP provider RedMoon was recently
caught working with NebuAd to insert ads into customer browsers.
• Paid blogger posts. Advertisers sometimes pay bloggers to write content for
them to promote products and service. PayPerPost www.payperpost.com and
ReviewMe www.reviewme.com are examples of such services. For the blogger,
making some additional money on the side may seem like a good idea, but it
does raise the question: are all small bloggers becoming cheap advertisers?
If this does become an increasing trend, the whole landscape of blogging
will change. There is some debate about whether bloggers should disclose
which posts are sponsored and which aren’t. If you want to read more about
this, have a look at this resource: www.waxingunlyrical.com/2011/01/19/
sponsored-blogging-a-new-age-ethical-question/.
• YouTube video ads. When you click on a YouTube video, you expect to watch
a video, not an advertisement. YouTube is a free video distribution website
and some videos are only a few second long, and yet you are often forced
to watch an advertisement than is potentially longer than the video itself.
This is annoying and does not seem necessary when watching a homemade
video about super heroes, even if the advertisement is relevant to the
target audience. File-sharing websites even have fake MP3 files filled with
advertisements. Online radio stations also do this – for example, KFM online
promotes Piggs Peak casino when you sign on, which is annoying but effective.
5. Summary
Online advertising is a multi-dimensional marketing technique with the ultimate
goal of converting online visitors into future customers. Free methods of brand
promotion do take time rather than money, but the long-term benefits are well
worth the effort. Paid advertising can have some immediate results and is deemed
to be a very successful marketing technique, provided ads are highly targeted,
budgets are managed and PPC is supported by other offline and online marketing
initiatives.
• Looked at the differences between online and offline advertising, and between
paid and free methods of promoting yourself online.
• Learned many useful tactics for promoting yourself online, both for free and
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6. References
1. Marketing vs. advertising: What’s the difference? marketing.about.com/cs/
advertising/a/marketvsad.htm
3. Free online advertising services versus paid online advertising services: www.
pr-interactive.com/web-design-resources/2010/08/free-online-advertising-
services-vs-paid-online-advertising-services
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CHAPTER 6
SEARCH ENGINE
OPTIMISATION
Key concepts
Search engines and how they interact with websites, what is SEO, why is it important for
your website, how to optimise your website for search engines, what is your competition
doing online, off-page optimisation, tools and applications for optimisation.
CHAPTER 6:
SEARcH EnginE
oPTimisATion
1. Introduction
Imagine this scenario. On Monday morning, you arrive at work and decide to
research what shows are currently running in Cape Town. You do not have a
newspaper, nor do you subscribe to any “gig guides” on the web. Where to next?
You open your browser and search for “buy tickets for a show Cape Town” in
Google. Immediately, search results display, with Computicket appearing at the
top of the list.
• How did Computicket make it to the top of the page, above all other websites?
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All of these questions and more will be answered in this chapter. The purpose of
any website is to reach existing and current customers. It is your virtual office.
When people search for specific keywords, like in the example above, the aim is for
your website to be at the top of the page, or somewhere on the first page at the
very least. Remember the difference between organic (natural) and paid search
results from chapter 5? No paid search tactic will help you achieve a high ranking
in a search engines, but there are organic techniques that will help you optimise
your website’s content and improve your popularity with search engines so that
your website will be visible to online users.
• Learn about search engines and how they interact with websites (section 2).
• Learn how to optimise your website for search engines (section 5).
• Learn how to see what your competition is doing online (section 5).
• Discover tools and applications that will help you optimise how search engines
interact with your website (section 7).
As search engines crawl websites, they use special mathematical formulas called
search algorithms, which help organise, file and rank information in order of
relevance to a particular search query. Each search engine uses different search
methodologies and will therefore not necessarily return the same search results.
In order for search engines to know where to file websites, they need to be able
to access the content of the website. Imagine that there was a system that could
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read the text of books in a library (before the emergence of ebooks) and tag
each book with relevant keywords. When someone searches the library database
for “African cooking books”, all relevant publications appear in the search results.
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Yes, library databases do add keyword tags to each book in their database, but
this is a manual process and takes time to update. Search engines work on the
same premise.
The problem with many websites is that they are not search engine “friendly”.
Google, for example, may not be able to find the “title” or “description” of your
site (which means it doesn’t know what your site is about), links could be broken,
pages might not be filed correctly and your navigation may not be optimised for
search engine spiders (also known as robots or bots). This is where search engine
optimisation plays a role. By making small modifications to parts of your website,
your website’s user experience and performance in organic search results may
increase dramatically.
Meta-tags
HTML code that describes the website to a search engine. Search engines use the
content of these tags to help them organise websites in order of relevance to a
particular query.
Keywords
Specific terms used to search for something on the internet. Some keywords are
more popular than others and will generate more search engine results.
Keyword stuffing
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that robots and spiders could crawl and index them. Invisible text and doorway
pages (fake hidden pages used purely for search engine spiders) were used. SEO
spam – adding more relevant HTML text content on a web page and overload the
text with keywords – was also very popular. The human eye can’t see these extra
keywords, but search engines can and will hopefully rank you higher in search
results. There were many HTML tricks to hide text and boost keyword density, but
search engines were not sophisticated enough to detect many of these scams and
so websites got high rankings very quickly. This is termed black hat SEO (after the
evil black-hatted cowboy in classic Western movies): it is the use of illegal means
to achieve a short-term high search engine ranking.
Finally, in the early 21st century, Google entered the search market arena and
changed the rules of SEO dramatically by introducing the concept of backlinks to
rank a website, rather than simply analysing the content on a web page, which
is far easier to manipulate. In addition, Google declared war on spammers, and
removed websites that used black hat techniques from their index (also known
as blacklisting). The concept of analysing a website’s backlinks was based on
Google’s link algorithm called PageRank, which assigns a numeric weighting to
sets of documents on the web, measuring their relative importance in terms of
the number of external websites that link back to it. PageRank uses the logic
of academic citation: an academic paper that is referenced by lots of external
sources is likely to be more credible than a paper that is referenced less often.
Each page of every website has a PageRanking based on Google’s algorithm. This
ranking is updated every time Google crawls the web and updates its databases.
Today, SEO has moved to a new era of sophistication. Search engines have come
along way in combatting spam, and while black hat SEO still exists, it is not a
viable strategy for any legitimate business that wants to gain long-term visibility
on search engine results. Today, the SEO process involves processing of large
quantities of data, mathematical calculations, analysis and regular monitoring
of websites for their relative keywords. It is important that everyone, from a
small-business owner to a marketing executive, understands the essential tasks
of search engine optimisation. The next few sections in this chapter will provide
you with the tools to research keywords, monitor competition and make small
modifications to your website that, over time, will increase your search rankings.
Note: If you are serious about optimising your website to improve its search
ranking, make sure that your marketers work closely with the IT department as
SEO is a very technical skill. You can also speak to a professional SEO service
provider, who can give you additional coaching as well as monitor your website on
a daily basis and provide monthly reports on your SEO status.
• 90% of internet users do not go past the top 30 search results (10 results
per page).
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If your website is not on the first page of search results, you are unlikely to get
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many visitors from any search engine. If you do not rank highly with Google,
you will most likely not rank highly with other search engines either, since most
other engines use ranking algorithms with similar logic in order to rank websites
in results pages.
SEO is a long-term marketing technique that will bear fruits if you approach it with
determination and patience. With the right skills, knowledge and resources, SEO
could be the simplest and most important marketing tactic for achieving increased
traffic and ultimately increasing your return on investment.
• Return on investment (ROI). SEO has a better ROI than any other marketing
medium. The only “cost” spent on SEO is the time spent researching,
calculating and analysing data, but the return can be considerable.
• Brand presence. SEO helps build an online brand presence and long-term
positioning. Search engine rankings are relatively stable compared to PPC and
SEO is cheaper and works over a longer term than other marketing strategies.
• Flexible. Through an SEO campaign, you can reach a large audience of people.
Your organisational strategies can optimise your website to meet the needs
and requirements of your choice.
4. Keyword research
Remember that keywords are specific terms used to search for something on
the internet. Some keywords are more popular than others and will generate
more search engine results. As you will discover in section 6 of this chapter, your
keyword list will be used for the written content of your site, page titles, meta-
data and the structure of your URL. The initial research process is critical to the
success of your SEO campaign.
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But how do you start writing a list of keywords for your website?
What would someone search for in order to find your product? Take the
Computicket example at the beginning of this chapter. Computicket could
use the following keyword: events, tickets, packages, book tickets, shows,
concerts, sales, Computicket.
2. Customers. Send out a survey or ask a few loyal customers to describe your
company and your key services or products. People think differently, as does
Google. The more targeted your list of keywords, the better. Competition is
another place to look for keyword research; more on this in the next section.
4. Final list. Once you have compiled a final list of keywords (start with around
20 words and phrases, or one to two phrases per page of content), commit to
these words for at least the first six months of your SEO campaign, especially
when building a new website. It takes a few months for search engines to
crawl new websites and index pages accordingly.
Note: Please see the application section for a list of keyword research tools.
• Refrain from choosing someone else’s trademark words (for example “super
quick” if you are a tyre distributor). You may find yourself in court for abusing
intellectual property rights.
Here is an example of keyword research for the phrase “movie ticket” using Google
Insight.
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From the Google Insight data, you can see that India has a 100% interest in the
“movie ticket” as a search term, followed by Singapore. There are also some
similar keywords that have equally high traffic – “movie ticket booking” and “ticket
booking”. “Movie ticket” falls under a variety of categories and you can also see
the top searches for variations of “movie ticket”. As you can see by this example,
by using only one research tool, you can gain significant insights about a keyword
or keyword group.
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questions:
• How important are they and how highly do they rank for your chosen
keywords?
Right click (with your mouse) on the home page of each competitor and select
the “View source” option from the list that appears. You will be able to view their
page title, meta-description and keywords. (More on how to create meta-data in
the next section.)
• How many websites link to each competitor? You can use a tool like www.
linkpopularity.com to find this out.
• How many pages does each competitor have indexed with search engines? Use
www.selfseo.com/search_engines_index_report.php to check the number of
indexed pages across all major search engines for any URL.
5. On-page optimisation
In Google’s own words, “Search engine optimisation is about putting your site’s
best foot forward when it comes to visibility in search engines.” Although Google
places an emphasis on the links pointing to your site in order to rank it, there is
still a variety of on-page optimisation tactics that can be applied to your site in
order to increase search engine rankings and resulting traffic. It is easier to build a
search-engine-friendly website from scratch than it is to retroactively apply these
changes to an existing site, but either way these principles should be applied to
ensure better optimisation.
You should always create a unique title for each page on your site that closely
matches the contents of that page. Below is a screenshot of the top of the
Getaway website. There are four tabs for different websites. The text that you
can see in the tab (highlighted by the red box) is the page’s title tag. In HTML, it
is between the <title></title> tags, which can be seen below the image. The title
of the page is “Travel & Accommodation Southern Africa – Getaway.co.za”.
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In order to view the HTML information, open the www.getaway.co.za home page
and right click with your mouse. Click on “View source” in the dropdown menu. Do
not get overwhelmed by the pages of code. Press CRTL and the letter “F” on your
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keyboard at the same time and a little “find” tool will appear. Search for “title” to
find the title tag.
<head>
</head>
The title of the home page for Getaway’s website tells the search engine who
they are, what they do and what geographical location they are relevant to: travel,
accommodation and South Africa.
If Getaway appears in a search engine results page, the content of the title tag
usually appears as the hyperlinked title in the listing. Words in the title appear in
bold if they appear in the user’s search query. This helps users identify the page’s
relevance.
Figure 3: Getaway shows up as the first listing, with the words “Africa” and
“Getaway” in bold and the title tag on the first line.
• Unique titles. Make sure that lower-level pages on your website also have
unique title tags to describe the content on those particular pages.
• Get to the point. Google only indexes the first 65 characters (including
spaces) of a title tag, so make sure that the title is this length or shorter.
Google also assigns more emphasis to words at the beginning of the tag than
the end, so place your important keywords towards the beginning.
• Don’t stuff keywords. Make sure your title tag is informative but still readable.
Bear in mind that users will also be reading this tag in results pages, so its
contents will influence whether they’ll click through on your listing or not.
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<head>
</head>
Meta-description tags are not used in Google’s algorithm to rank a page, but
they’re still important since they show in search engine results. This snippet is the
brief description that appears below the title and above the URL in a search listing.
The content of this tag will therefore influence whether a searcher will click on
your listing or someone else’s. If a meta-description isn’t specified on a particular
web page, Google may use a snippet of relevant text on the page that is related
to the search query. In some cases, Google may also use your description from
DMOZ (Open Directory Project) if you have submitted your site there (this was
mentioned in module 5). If you would like further information on how to improve
your snippets, visit the video section of this module for Matt Cutt’s explanation of
snippets and see this blog post from Webmaster Tools:
googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/09/improve-snippets-with-meta-
description.html.
• As with title tags, always keep description tags relevant to the content on
the page.
• Do not fill the description with just keywords; instead, write an informative
sentence.
• Try to write a unique description for each page. You can automatically
generate meta-tags for each page based on each page’s content if you have
too many pages to write unique descriptions for.
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Keyword meta-tags
You have heard of a keyword meta-tag. This tag also sits in the <head> tag and
lists any keywords related to the website. Unfortunately, due to the prevalence
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of keyword stuffing, search engines do not value this meta-tag anymore as it has
been abused by too many websites in the past. Although there is little to no value
in keyword tags anymore, it is still good practice to include these tags on every
page, along with the title and description tags. The only time this tag will be used
is if there is no other content present on the page that tells a search engine what
it is about (for example, if the page is only images with no text). Make sure that
any keywords in this tag can also be found in the contents of that web page.
Search engines will scan the page to see if the keywords match or whether this
tag has been abused. Getaway’s keyword meta-tags:
• www.getaway.co.za/directories/1356543/x145656/343a.html
Users cannot easily remember this URL and Google cannot pick up any relevant
keywords.
• www.getaway.co.za/directories/la-fontaine-guest-house.html
• www.getaway.co.za/directories/type/operators/holiday-services
Users can see where they are in the website and what page they are on (“La
Fontaine Guest House” or “holiday services”), and Google knows that the first URL
is likely to contain information about “La Fontaine Guest House”, while the second
is likely to be about “holiday services”. When someone searches for that particular
guest house, it will therefore have a better chance of appearing in related search
results if the URL is well structured and has keywords relevant to the content on
the page.
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A search for “La Fontaine Guest House getaway” produced the result shown above.
“Guest houses”, “Getaway” and “La Fontaine” are bolded in the title, description
and URL.
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• Keep URLs short and to the point and do not use generic page names (e.g.
destination1.html, destination2.html).
• The structure of your site should be very simple so that users can find their
way easily. You learned about this in chapter 2. This structure should be
reflected in your URL (e.g. homepage – destination – La Fontaine Guest
House).
• Only use one version of a URL to reach a particular page, and not multiple
versions (in other words, accessing the same content through multiple URLs).
Websites operate in the same way. A well-organised site helps visitors move
between pages in a seamless fashion. All websites have a “root” page, which is
usually the home page – the starting place for most visitors. Think of your content
in terms of hierarchy (remember chapter 2 on web development). The home page
should have many “calls to action” linking visitors to lower-level pages with more
specific content on a particular topic.
1. Home
www.getaway.co.za
2. Destinations
www.getaway.co.za/page/destinations
3. Travel guide
www.getaway.co.za/directories/index.php
3.1. All
www.getaway.co.za/directories
3.2. Operators
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www.getaway.co.za/directories/type/operators/
www.getaway.co.za/directories/type/operators/activity-operators
www.getaway.co.za/directories/type/operators/holiday-services
www.getaway.co.za/directories/type/operators/tour-operators
www.getaway.co.za/directories/type/places-to-stay/
From the above example, you can see that the URL structure reflects the
navigation of the website. As visitors click deeper into the website, the URL moves
deeper into the file structure. Spend a few minutes visiting some of your favourite
websites. You will find that not all websites abide by this best practice rule of site
navigation. The same principles apply to any filing system: the more organised you
are at the outset, the easier it will be to manage when the site increases in pages.
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“table of contents” in a book). Visitors may use this page if they are looking for
a particular page on your site and cannot find it in the navigation. As with footers
that contain text links, HTML sitemaps are helpful to search engines, as they can
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now access all the links on a site as plain text links rather than links within images
or JavaScript.
www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=40318.
• Text. Use mainly text when creating navigation as it’s easier for visitors and
search engines to find pages and relevant information. Numbers or random
letters make no sense and can be confusing.
• Create a dynamic HTML sitemap and put in on your site. Ask your technical
team for assistance. Make sure it never becomes out of date or contains
broken links.
• Test your URLs. Make sure that if a user removes part of your URL they
still land on a page. For example, take www.getaway.co.za/directories/type/
operators/: if you remove “operators”, you will have www.getaway.co.za/
directories/type, which doesn’t exist. You will land on a 404 error page and
not a page within the website that contains content.
• A 404 page is an error page that appears if the page you are looking for does
not exist, if the link is broken or if you made a typo when entering the URL.
You can customise the 404 page so that visitors are guided back to your
website. This will immediately improve the user’s experience if they happen
to land on a non-existent page. Ask your technical team to set up a custom
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404 pages and make sure they are not indexed by search engines.
5.5 Content
Writing interesting and compelling content is the most important part of your
website, especially for visitor retention and search engine crawling. Once you have
decided on your keyword list, make sure that you integrate these keywords into
the meta-tags, heading and content of each page in a relevant and informative
manner. If you have the right keywords, they should appear in your copy naturally
without too much effort. Remember that the content is for real people too, so
balance your focus between SEO and readability.
Good-quality content spreads from user to user very quickly because people
like to share valuable information. This is called word of mouth buzz. Chapter
3 and chapter 7 discuss this concept in detail. When someone, for example a
blogger, finds some interesting content on your website, they may write about it
and then link to your website. These text links are critical for SEO. Blogs, social
networks and email campaigns all point to your website and search engines make
the connection between similar types of content, links and keywords. There needs
to be consistency in the quality of your writing and keyword density across all
marketing initiatives, whether on or offline.
Have a look at www.payfast.co.za. The red copy shows anchor links that navigate
away from the page.
• Try to include keywords that are relevant to the destination page within the
content of the link. For example, on the screenshot shown to the right, “Pay
using EFT” assigns relevance to the destination page for the keyword “EFT”.
• Choose descriptive text so that users know where they will go once they have
clicked the link.
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• Linking internally across your website is highly valuable. Linking from the
“destination” page to the “gallery” page, which then links to the “blog”,
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provides an invaluable user experience and search engines can navigate your
site better. Always think “user centric” when creating content; it’s all about
user experience. A positive experience will encourage a repeat visit and word-
of-mouth buzz.
5.5.2 Headings
After the URLs and meta-tags, headings are the third most important content
element on a web page. Heading tags (do not confuse these with the <head> HTML
tag) usually make the text bigger and have different sizes. <h1> is the biggest
and <h8> is the smallest and least important. Search engines read headings in
order of importance. All page headings should be <h1>, large and bold, which
makes it easier for users to read and lets the content stand out above the body
copy. Headings also create a hierarchical structure of content on your site, making
it easier for search engines (and human readers) to prioritise content.
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In the example shown above, the larger bolder text is H1 and the slightly smaller
heading is H2. Search engines read the content in this order: H1, H2 and then the
rest of the copy.
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Another great example is www.vatit.com. This website sells VAT return and refund
services across the globe and is highly optimised for search engines. Click through
to some lower-level pages. Throughout the website, all dark blue headings are
<h1> tags and all light blue headings are <h2> tags. Search engines read these
headings in order of priority from big to small. Make sure you have added relevant
keywords to all headings (for example, “International VAT Refund & Tax Reclaim
Specialists”). You will also notice that all content links contain keywords (e.g.
“Learn more about foreign VAT recovery”).
• Only use one <h1> tag per page, and don’t overuse lower-level header tags
such as <h2> and <h3> tags.
• Make sure that the text in header tags helps define the structure of the page.
• Be consistent with your heading tag sizes and styles across your website.
• Make sure you use heading tags and not images or image text for headings.
Search engines cannot read anything but heading tags (more about images
in 5.5.3).
• Use heading tags for content structure, not just for styling.
5.5.3 Images
Flash and images are fantastic ways to make a website appealing to readers,
attractive and compelling. However, search engines have difficulty accessing the
content contained within Flash files (though they have made improvements in
recent years). Also, from a usability perspective, not everyone is able to download
the Flash element (due to low bandwidth and slow internet speed). If you would
like to optimise your website, use Flash elements within an HTML page, and do not
create a website that is 100% contained within a Flash file.
However, try not to use too many images as links in your site’s navigation when
text links could serve the same purpose. Optimising your image file names and alt
text makes it easier for image search tools to understand your images.
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Note: Make sure that you save all imagery in a separate image folder or directory
instead of across multiple subdirectories. This way, the path for all images will be
the same (e.g. www.getaway.co.za/images/madibi_resort).
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Below is an example of an image that wasn’t displayed to the user, but the alt tag
is still displayed (in red).
Note: Make sure you use unique file names for all images, and not generic names
like image1.jpg, image2.jpg.
Images can also have title tags – this is an explanation of the image that you
will see if you hover over it (only in Opera and Firefox). This tag just allows for
additional information for the reader. Ideally you should have both an alt and a title
tag. The alt tag allows readers to know what was supposed to load if it doesn’t,
and it allows Google to see what the image is about (because Google can’t “see”
images). The title tag allows a description of the image to be included when you
hover over it.
• Do not write duplicate copy. You won’t gain search engine visibility by doing
this, and you create a bad user experience for your human visitors who will
be presented with multiple versions of the same content.
• Write for your readers and not for search engines. Even if you achieve high
rankings through optimised copy, if it is stuffed full of keywords, your human
visitors will leave your site just as fast as they’ve arrived. In summary, never
sacrifice readability for search engine optimisation.
• The first paragraph of any page is the most critical for SEO. Make sure that
the keywords you used for your title and description tags are also in the first
paragraph of copy.
• Meta-tags should always be at the very top of the HTML code, inside the
head tags, so that they are the first thing search engines read.
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• You will probably come across the term keyword density and keyword ratio:
this is the amount of keywords as a percentage of the total amount of text
on a page. As a rule, try to keep your keyword density between 5% and 10%
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on a particular page.
6. Off-page optimisation
As discussed earlier in these notes, one of the main ways in which Google assigns
value to one web page over another is by analysing the quality and quantity of
links pointing into a particular page. There are many ways to increase the amount
of good-quality links that point in to your site. These include soliciting links from
sites that you already have an existing partnership with (such as your customers
or vendors), distributing content that then links back to your site, and submitting
your site to related directories. Details on these techniques are given below.
• Open source and business directories. Add your website to network directories
like DMOZ as well as local business directories like the Yellow Pages and
Google’s local business centre: www.google.com/local/add.
• Tools and widgets. Creating a useful tool or widget that contains a link back
to your site when it’s installed on someone else’s site is a good way of
increasing inbound link value for your own website.
• Social media sites. Social media sites such as StumbleUpon, Facebook and My
Yahoo enable you to create a profile on their site, post links and add content.
You gain brand awareness and links back to your website, plus you can gain
a large online following spreading your website and brand virally through the
web. While links from publicly accessible pages such as a Facebook Page will
have link value, note that many links from social media sites such as Twitter
have “no follow” tags attached, which tells search engines not to assign link
value to the destination page. Most social bookmarking sites also have “no
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follow” attributes assigned to outgoing links, but they can still help drive
traffic to your site. Here is a list of social bookmarking sites:
www.kevin.vanzonneveld.net/techblog/article/list_of_social_bookmarking_sites.
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Even if sites like Twitter don’t assign link value back to your site, they can still help
to drive traffic to your site, as well as to promote it by generating buzz around
your brand and product offerings. Increased buzz means increased awareness
about your brand online, which results in more people talking about you and linking
to your website from their own blogs or websites. Creating buzz can be effectively
done through social media sites but also through other offline promotional
methods, such as flyers, advertorials and business cards.
Overall, combining off- and on-page optimisation will help your business to
maximise its visibility on search engines, as well as to drive more traffic to your
site through increased exposure of your brand online.
• See which web pages on your site are indexed with Google.
• View all search engine queries that list your website as a result.
The best way to learn about and understand this tool is to try it. There is a video
tutorial about it in the video section of this chapter. Below is the step-by-step
process for signing in to www.google.com/webmasters/tools.
Once you have watched the video tutorial, you will need to do the following:
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Here is a Yola tutorial on how to verify your website with Webmaster: bit.ly/5FCDtS.
This tutorial will also show you how to submit your XML sitemap to Google.
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Once you have completed the verification process, the second port of call is
the Webmaster Central blog at googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com. There
are several noteworthy links to a variety of topics and tools to enhance your
understanding of Webmaster Tools. Spend some time testing some of the tools
and over time your will see great results.
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This is a simple but very effective tool to check the keyword density of your
website. Type in your website’s URL and then a keyword or phrase. Then click
“Analyze Keyword Density”.
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Here are the results from the analysis for the keyword “internet marketing”:
As you can see, the majority of GetSmarter’s keywords are in the visible text of
the website.
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8. Summary
SEO is a gradual process that takes time, patience and a lot of research. Most sites
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will gain SEO traction gradually as they add new content to their site, tweak and
optimise content over time and as search engines discover, index and understand
their content, and as the amount of quality links pointing to their site increases.
Always use ethical means to improve SEO and never take any technique to extreme
measures ¬– this may do your site more harm than good.
• Learned what SEO is and how search engines use this data to categorise your
website.
• Discovered that SEO is vial for ensuring that users and search engines can
find your website easily.
• Learned the best ways to optimise your website from off your page.
• Discovered some useful tools for helping you optimise your website and
improving the way search engines see your page.
9. References
1. Google’s Search Engine Optimisation Starter Guide
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CHAPTER 7
Key concepts
What is social networking, types of social media, outlining a social media strategy for your
business, building, maintaining and communiting with your social networking community,
viral marketing and creating your own viral marketing campaign.
CHAPTER 7:
SociAl mEdiA And
ViRAl mARkETing
1. Introduction
If any single trend exemplifies the online space of today, it is social media. The
entire premise of web 2.0 is based on the ability to network with peers and
likeminded communities using technology. The largest and most famous social
media community of all, Facebook, has exceeded 750 million subscribers and is
still growing steadily; by population, it would be the third largest country in the
world. Social communities facilitated by social media platforms have sprung up
around hobbies, locations, causes, beliefs, creative works and even brands. They
have incredible power to steer opinions and spread messages, making them both
extremely valuable and very risky to use. This chapter will provide you with a simple
and honest overview of the true benefits of social media, as well as the challenges
and problems you may face in marketing your brand across these platforms.
• Learn about the many types of online social media used today (section 3).
• Discover how to outline a social media strategy for your business (section 4).
• Learn how to build, maintain and communicate with your social networking
community (section 5).
• Learn how viral marketing works, and get tips for creating your own viral
campaign (section 6).
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focused niche community pages. Most are impossible to fully define because
they have their own unique combinations of features, tools and uses. In addition,
not all are well suited to marketing strategies, or may require radically different
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approaches.
There are online tools available for creating custom social networks. Ning, a paid
service, allows anyone to create a customised social network around a cause,
business, location or shared interest; the creator can add a variety of features,
including advertising and donation applications. Recently, social networks have
branched off into niche fields: for example, Meetup (www.meetup.com) is a social
network that aims to facilitate meetings in the real world between people who
share an interest.
2.1.1 Facebook
Facebook is a great tool for creating an online profile. You can create an official
Facebook Page, which is a public profile page that can be created for any brand,
cause, hobby or company. Facebook users can “Like” the page if they appreciate
the content or the creator. Facebook Pages also allow you to interact with
customers by posting photos, chatting in the discussion forum, posting updates
on the wall and adding information pertinent to the business.
2.1.2 LinkedIn
LinkedIn is primarily a business-to-business social network, although it is
commonly used as a place for professionals across various industries to network
online. You can create a profile for your company, join groups and network with
related businesses. The company’s page can list your current and past employees,
information about your business and contact details. Others can “follow” your
profile to get updates about you.
Pros:
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• Complete control over the design, content and build of the platform
Cons:
• You often need to pay for the service, unlike other networks that are free to
use
• Your community will exist in isolation from the rest of the web
• You can’t rely on friends of followers finding your network, since it is isolated
• You are more responsible for upkeep and maintenance of your page
2.2 Forums
Forums are online community message boards where users can post and reply
to topics. While forums are not as immediate as instant messaging, they allow
conversations to grow as participants discuss a topic publicly. Users can link their
accounts to friends’ profiles, and can gain credibility based on the number of
posts they have written and discussions they have contributed to.
Forums can either stand alone as a community platform, or can be integrated into
larger social networks (for example, Facebook Pages have forums). Google Groups
allows anyone to create a group around a hobby, organisation, location or other
common feature; these groups tend to be forum based. In almost all cases, forums
are very tightly focused around a single hobby (or an aspect of one), organisation
or interest. This makes them a good place for niche product marketing, though this
should be kept separate from the actual discussions themselves as this is considered
spam in most forums’ terms. Forums also provide a unique opportunity for building
a relationship with a brand representative in a social space – MyBroadband (www.
mybroadband.co.za) does this very effectively. Most forums are moderated; if a
moderator suspects someone of trying to advertise or of not being who they say
they are, that person will be reprimanded or even kicked off the forum.
2.3 Blogs
A blog (the contraction of “web log”) is an online tool that allows a user to publish
articles or posts on any topic; it can also serve as a personal web journal. Good
blogs are focused around a clearly defined topic and are updated regularly (though
the frequency depends on the nature of the content). Ideally, blog articles are
short, easy to read and discuss or explain one central idea. The social part of
blogging has two aspects.
First, readers can comment on a post by leaving a short text-like message, and
can engage in a discussion with other readers and the blogger.
Second, blogs can form networks around related interests, or can join blogging
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Of course, besides this, links to articles and blogs make good content for sharing
on other social networks. Remember to use trackbacks, which are links to other
blog posts that inspired or are related to your post – this builds the blogging
community and encourages others to visit your pages. Blogs can be used in
marketing by promoting and explaining a company’s products and by providing
interesting and useful related content to readers.
2.3.1 Microblogs
A recent arrival on the blogging front is the microblog. A microblog takes the idea
of a blog – an article discussing a topic or sharing an idea – and shrinks it down
exponentially with a strict character limit. Since web users dislike long, complex
content, micro-blogging is an excellent tool to use – it keeps messages short
and simple. The best-known microblogging service is Twitter, one of the world’s
largest and most active social platforms. Twitter users can follow others to read
their messages, or can be followed themselves. The shortness of the message (no
more than 140 characters) means that tweets have to be carefully tailored; URL-
shortening services are useful because they condense a web address to preserve
characters. Twitter is an excellent way to share news about your brand, and is
suitable for companies that have frequent updates that they want to share with
a large community. On Twitter, you can create a corporate profile and interact
under its name. Your profile includes a very brief description of your business and
a link to your website.
2.3.2 Podcasts
A podcast is the audio-visual equivalent of a written blog: it is a series of sound
or video clips that together form a radio-style show. Like blogs, podcasts focus
on a specific topic and expand on it by providing a range of multimedia content –
however, they must be updated regularly to be valuable. Depending on your brand
or product, a podcast could be an excellent way to communicate new information
with customers. For example, you could record news, bulletins and editorial content
that users can load onto their iPods and listen to when they’re on the move.
2.4 Aggregators
An aggregator is a web tool that collects and filters updated online information
according to certain parameters. It functions like a tailor-made news stream: it
can be set to find all information about a person, a certain piece of technology, a
political theory – anything you can think of. This content is gathered and displayed
in a single, easy-to-use stream, taking away the hassle of having to source the
information manually.
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be tagged and organised by category, making it easy for the user to access. The
content will either appear in a special stream on a separate web page, or can be
added to a customised home page. RSS readers themselves don’t have a direct
application for marketing, but they are a good way of keeping up with industry
news.
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2.6.1 Wikis
A wiki is a web page on a specific topic that can be edited by anyone. The best-
known collection of wikis is Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia that is created and
maintained by millions of people from all around the world. It is a great indicator
of the power and potential of collaborative knowledge creation. Wiki pages can be
created on any topic, and the process of collaborating and sharing is important
to building a community. For example, WikiTravel is starting to replace traditional
guidebooks because it’s completely up to date, written by a wide variety of people
and free. Consider the power of a wiki page created around your product, on which
you can include new information, improvements and features – and even allow
customers to add their own suggestions and feedback.
2.6.2 Crowdsourcing
Crowdsourcing is the process of sourcing ideas from an online “crowd” of many
people at once. It can be an excellent way for brainstorming projects, solving
complex problems or getting many people involved in a competition or other
brand activity. This teamwork is a valuable social activity and can result in some
excellent outcomes, not least new strategies or solutions. However, care should
be taken not to exploit contributors because they will hesitate to participate the
next time.
However, despite the ease and user friendliness of this strategy, there are several
risks involved. The biggest is the loss of privacy for the user. Many people are not
aware that when the log in with a social networking account to another site, that
site gets access to their publicly available user data, as well as to the data of all of
their friends. This access has some considerable repercussions, including indicating
which pages you have visited, contacting your friends, harvesting demographic
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data and using the data to target you with adverts and content. While some
people have no problem with this, others who are concerned about their privacy
may be giving more away than they are comfortable with.
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1. Connecting. This is by far the most important part of the entire social
networking process. Web users build complex networks of friends, family,
colleagues and strangers, and devise ways of communicating with these
disparate groups. If you’ve heard of the “six degrees of separation” idiom
(which states that everyone in the world is connected to everyone else by
a maximum of six steps along the social ladder), then you understand the
premise of building connections online using social networking. Community is
the central tenet of social networking.
3. Engaging. While sharing is vital, engaging with other users and their shared
material is equally so. Whether this engagement is a simple “like” or “retweet”,
a comment, an in-depth response, a satire or a critique, it is important to take
an active role in shaping the message around the content. Also, it is easy to
engage directly in conversation with any other individual or group of users,
communicating meaningfully with them. Essentially, social media marketing is
about building communities.
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each other. The early web protocols made it very difficult to build and find social
pages, meaning that websites generally existed in isolation. To counteract this,
several developers like Angelfire and GeoCities created tools to streamline the
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Once fan and personal pages began appearing, they were joined together in “web
rings” – linked communities of websites on a specific topic. At the same time,
online forums and instant messaging chat programs were growing in popularity as
people began to explore the possibilities of communicating with anyone around
the globe. AOL was an early leader in creating a more social web experience by
integrating search, chat, personal profiles and offline tools.
The first prototype social networks were launched in the late 1990s. Classmates.
com was the first on the scene in 1995, operating under the premise that people
wanted to connect with old friends and schoolmates. The site took off quickly,
and was copied by less successful imitations like SixDegrees. Then, in 2002, the
new wave of social networks revolutionised the fledgling industry. Friendster was
the first modern social network and was an instant and massive success. It was
followed a year later by LinkedIn, a more serious business network, and MySpace,
a “cooler” site for sharing music and games.
Everything changed in 2006 when Facebook was launched to the general public
(it had been available to US students since 2004). It gave users a new degree
of immediacy and entertainment, packaged in a simple, minimalist interface. Its
functionality quickly grew as applications and tools were added, making it the
richest content-sharing platform on the web. Because it was such a generalist
site, Facebook opened up the market for niche networks that catered for specific
nationalities, groups, hobbies and uses. The final revolution came in 2007 with the
arrival of Twitter into the mainstream. The microblogging site allowed users to
share thoughts more simply and directly than ever before, and became the web’s
first stop for breaking news and information.
• Socialising. Human beings are social creatures and thrive on interactions with
friends, family and colleagues. Almost everyone likes sharing their thoughts,
ideas, hobbies, news and questions with others – especially those who are
closest to them.
• Keeping in touch. For those who have friends or family who live abroad, or
who they are unable to visit regularly, social networking provides a good
alternative. The “any time, anywhere” potential of social networking also
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• Planning events. Many people use services like Facebook to plan their social
calendars. If they weren’t online, they would miss out on parties, meetings
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• Sharing media. Virtually all social networks allow users to share photos,
videos, text and links with each other. It’s often the quickest and best way
to share holiday snaps and funny stories with the largest number of people.
• Applications. Some of the big draw cards of social networks are the tools
and games that are integrated in the platforms. From tracking birthdays to
playing intricate simulation games (FarmVille on Facebook is an excellent
example), applications make users’ lives easier and give them a reason to
keep coming back.
• For business. Increasingly, people are turning to social networks to get new
clients and business contacts, find jobs, network with industry peers, market
their brands and share industry advice.
• Peer pressure. Everybody is doing it already, and no one wants to be left out.
Many people feel they have to be on social networks. Think of all the people
you keep in touch with just through a social medium. Would you be willing to
sacrifice that connection by logging out of your social network?
1. Advertising. You have already learned the importance of placing your online
adverts in the right places and of targeting the correct keywords and users.
Social networking takes this idea a step further because it involves marketing
in a social space – where adverts and promotional material are less welcome.
This makes it both harder to market (people don’t want to have an advertising
message forced on them) and more powerful (since the social space is ideal
for sharing, recommending and spreading adverts between friends).
2. Building a brand presence. This is the “soft sell” part of social network
marketing. By building a brand presence on a social network, your company
becomes a social actor that can engage with customers. It also becomes a
cornerstone in your web PR strategy.
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3. Word of mouth. This is the riskiest and least controllable aspect of social
networking, but one that can reap considerable rewards. Online word of
mouth spreads best over social networks and can be harnessed and steered
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by a clever online marketer. People are more likely to try something new
based on what people in their social group have recommended – so your aim
with social media is to try to get the right people to speak about your brand
and pass on the message.
Note that there is nothing here about increased traffic to your website; this is a
by-product of social media and should not be a goal because you are working with
other platforms. Once you have decided on a goal, consider whether it is possible
to achieve it online, and which social media platforms you should use to do this.
Greater sales will be easy if you have an online store, but less likely if the customer
must go to the shops to make the purchase. You company image can improve if
you are online, but what about people who bad-mouth you? Will you be able to
spread the word far enough and to the right people?
Spell out your goal clearly and try to include some definite, measurable elements.
Even if your goal is quite vague, like improving the image of your brand, try to
express the outcome in figures and clear results: for example, you expect at
least 20 positive mentions on Twitter each month, or at least 100 Likes on your
Facebook Page before a certain date. Transforming your ephemeral goal into clear
data will make choosing a social media platform much easier.
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• How much of your target market is online? And do they use computers or
cell phones?
• Does your target market engage with and enjoy using social media?
• Will your target market have sufficient leisure-time access to be able to view
your content? Many people are only online at work but cannot access social
media sites.
Social media marketing looks so affordable and easy that everyone thinks their
business should have at least one or two profiles on various social networks.
However, this is definitely not the case. Having the wrong social media strategy
in place – or sometimes having one at all – can turn out to be harmful: a badly
created or outdated page can have a very negative effect on brand perception.
Secondly, ask yourself which type of social media is the most appropriate in order
to connect with your target market. Consider the following:
• How tech savvy are your customers? Will they have high-speed connections
and will they be able to navigate complex pages?
• How does your market engage with social media already? Are they active or
not?
Trying to reach a target market on the wrong platform will at best get you ignored,
and at worst suggest that you are out of touch and unprofessional. Older banking
clients will not respond well to the youthful and music-based MySpace platform.
Facebook is not the best place to communicate with fellow businesses. Use the
information in this course (especially the table in section 4.5), and your own
judgement and research, to decide which platform works best for your particular
brand.
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• Will your marketers embrace social media? Are they well versed in it? Do they
understand and use it, and will they experiment with it?
• Will your marketer have enough time each day to maintain all of your social
media profiles? This includes creating and sharing content, tracking analytics,
reading comments and posts, responding to customers and many other tasks.
• Are you willing to commit time, money and personnel to a long-running social
media campaign? You won’t get results overnight.
• Judging your product and audience, does it make sense to devote resources
to social media?
You need the buy-in from not only your marketing team but from everyone,
including management. Although social media marketing appears to be free – after
all, you don’t need to pay to sign up with Facebook or Twitter – running a proper
strategy on it can be time consuming. A marketer will have to devote at least an
hour each day to maintaining the profiles and campaigns, time that could be spent
on other marketing activities. It is up to you to judge whether the time and money
spent are worth the results; this will relate back to your audience and product. The
tools you will learn about in chapter 8 will help you make these decisions. Also,
remember that there will always be new platforms to explore and you may not be
able to keep up with trends if you overfill your social media plate initially.
2. You can create a holistic brand image by combining your marketing message
with other useful content, conversations, customer feedback and brand
personality. It’s also a great way to manage your brand’s reputation, and
allows you to create a devoted community around your brand.
3. You can target your audience precisely and very specifically, resulting in a
much higher return on investment and a higher click-through rate to your
website or product pages.
4. Social media tools are relatively easy to use, cheaper than traditional media
and don’t require specialised technical skills. This means that anyone can
learn to use them effectively.
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5. Being online is vital in our interconnected world, and social media is one of
the quickest and cheapest ways to get your brand onto the internet. Your
product will reach new markets and will spread more easily online, increasing
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2. Every comment, reply and piece of content you put on your profile is visible
for a very long time. If considerable care is not taken, this visibility can act
against you – especially if you say something inappropriate by mistake or are
misunderstood by your audience.
3. Because customers and critics can engage with your brand openly, you no
longer have full control over your marketing message. If you handle the
web PR badly, this could result in brand esteem dropping, your brand being
ridiculed and sales falling. However, if you are doing something contrary to
what your target market needs, then social media opens the channels for
them to complain about this – this isn’t a bad thing. Since customers are
already speaking about you, the faster you can sort out the issues, the better.
4. Your target market may not respond to the social media channels at all,
resulting in a lot of wasted time and effort. This could happen either because
you applied the wrong strategy to your target market, or you used social
networking for a market that is unfamiliar with it.
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(www.facebook.com) messages
Clothing, fashion and
accessories Posting interesting content
(found or self-made)
Products focused at
university students Chatting casually with
customers
Popular brands that benefit
from word of mouth Managing Facebook
advertising and tracking
Entertainment products and analytics
media
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4. Be honest. Truth and frankness are not negotiable on social media. Whenever
you respond to anyone on a social media platform, be completely honest
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about what you say – and have no doubt that you will be found out if you bend
the truth. Also, make sure that your claims are not vague and misleading, and
never make big promises that you are unable to follow through on. If your
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product has a flaw or you have made a mistake, apologise directly and be
honest about the reason for the problem. It also helps to offer compensation.
Any dishonesty or misrepresentation will be severely criticised by the
community.
5. Stay relevant. Only post the newest, most interesting and most customer-
appropriate content. If what you share is relevant and useful to your readers,
they will help you spread it. Keep an eye on current trends and find ways
to link them back to your company or product. For example, since people
are currently very environmentally conscious, highlight how your product or
service could help conserve the environment (but only use this spin if it is
relevant and true).
6. Find a balance. While it is important to stay relevant and current, you must
also find a balance between relevance and how often you post content.
Consider both your own time constraints and the nature of the platform. In
general, the shorter or quicker the contribution, the more often you should
use it, and vice versa. For example, feel free to post tweets a few times a
day, but don’t write more than a few short blog posts a week. After all, your
customers can only absorb so much before they feel overloaded and venture
elsewhere. And don’t underestimate the time it takes to craft meaningful
contributions.
3. Run competitions. One of the best ways to encourage your current followers
to invite their friends is to run competitions where the best recruiters win
a prize, or where everyone will receive a prize if the number of followers
reaches a certain number before the time runs out.
4. Make new friends. If you are using social media properly, you will be making
new contacts every day as you follow and converse with others. Join their
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conversations and spread their links. Then get them to return the favour.
5. Spread the word. Get your message out far and wide – write blog articles,
tweet about it, email industry contacts and friends, advertise in traditional
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media, attend conferences to chat to people in person and so on. This may
sometimes require courage and audacity, but don’t be afraid to put your
brand out there.
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Repeat customers also play an important role in the community because they can
broadcast their satisfaction both actively and passively. Of course, somebody
singing your praises is very valuable, but seeing the same person contributing
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often to a Facebook page or blog comment thread also instils confidence in the
brand. Encourage community members to become repeat customers by offering
incentives or loyalty programs, and keep the community engaged on your chosen
media so that they are more exposed to your brand. Make the benefits of sticking
around very clear; don’t let customers drift away after their initial contact with
your brand.
• The lurker. A lurker is someone who views and takes part in social media but
never openly participates or speaks up. For example, a forum lurker may read
the posts and conversations but will never add comments. The majority of
your social media community are likely to be lurkers, since only about 10%
of people take steps to comment or engage actively. The one place lurkers
will show up is in your analytics data, since their activities leave trails there.
• The complainer. A complainer is someone who will only speak up if they have
a problem or issue to resolve. Complainers may seem negative, but they are
generally otherwise-happy customers who are looking for help. One of the best
social marketing moves is to address the problems of complainers openly and
quickly, demonstrating the lengths you will go to to make a customer happy.
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• The troll. A troll is someone who has nothing good to say about your brand
and who will complain constantly and vocally about your product. Trolls are
not looking for resolution, so there is little you can do for them. If ignoring
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them doesn’t work, try challenging them to substantiate their points, or see
if you can remove them from the community if the situation spirals out of
control. Just make sure that you try to keep this offline.
Maintaining a community means dealing with all manner of people and remaining
sensitive to individual issues as well as to group concerns. Ideally, once your
community is launched, you should have very little to do as your customers will
create the engagement. In reality, however, you will need to keep a close eye and
monitor how conversations are evolving.
• Your tone. Is your brand serious and professional, or fun and casual? Suit your
tone to your brand and target market, and keep it consistent. Also consider
the words you use and create a brand lexicon to include them (which can tie
in to your SEO strategy).
• Your voice. Is your brand taking the role of the helpful expert, a friend or a
peer? Decide what role you want to play in the community and speak through
that voice.
• Your look. Aside from tailoring your social media to your current brand identity
(logo, colours and motifs), think of other ways you can bring the brand’s
personality across visually.
A brand with a defined personality is easier to relate to. If your brand has a
mascot (think of Ronald McDonald or Tony the Tiger), it can take the role of
brand ambassador on your social networks. However, make sure the character is
humanised and addresses customers personally – they need to feel that there is a
real person behind the façade.
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2. Pick platforms. Study the available social media and pick those platforms that
are suited to your needs.
3. Recruit. Find influencers and current customers who will be willing to join your
brand community.
5. Measure. This is vital: use the correct web analytics to track what works and
what doesn’t.
6. Promote. Once your community is up and running, think of ways to get more
people involved: advertising, competitions, special offers and so on.
7. Improve. Implement the lessons learned and metrics that you’ve measured to
improve your community. This is an ongoing process.
6. Viral marketing
Viral marketing is an extremely popular concept of late and ties inextricably into
social media. Essentially, viral marketing is the online equivalent of traditional
word-of-mouth marketing, which means that a message spreads from person to
person, reaching an exponentially growing number of people as the message is
passed along to acquaintances. Viral marketing has itself become a bit of a viral
concept and everyone is eager to launch their own campaigns. However, though
it may seem random and effortless, viral marketing is actually a very intricate,
challenging and planned process; it will not happen overnight. This section
provides an overview of the topic and gives some advice on attempting to launch
a campaign. For a quick introduction, watch this short video called “How to sell
soap”: (www.youtube.com/watch?v=vj29qmLnBiE).
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though this may not be immediately obvious, and is built to be an optimal viral
message. An example is Quicksilver’s “dynamite surfing” video, available here:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xfBNxNds0Q. Even though it depicts an obviously
staged event, the video was so entertaining that it received 10 million views and
had a massive marketing impact on the brand. Controlled viral marketing is part
of a brand strategy and has defined, measurable goals. In general, the branded
nature of the message has no effect on whether it will spread virally.
ARGs can either be obvious and branded, or can be subversive and abstract. An
example of the former is the Lost Experience, a long-running and very complex
ARG held between seasons 2 and 3 of Lost, a popular science fiction TV series. It
initially involved several websites for fictional companies mentioned in the show
that were filled with hidden conspiracy messages, and branched out to include real
world websites for companies like Sprite, physical hidden clues, a novel, a phone
line, TV commercials and other elements. Players were fully aware that the game
was tied to the show, and pooled their considerable resources to solve extremely
complex programming, physics, science and cultural mysteries.
An example of a subversive ARG is “I Love Bees”, a 2004 campaign for the video
game Halo 2. The story revolved around an artificial intelligence that took over
control of a bee-keeping website and directed players to solve all manner of
puzzles and questions. The link to the page was hidden in a trailer for Halo 2, but
the game was not mentioned in any way throughout the experience, focusing
instead on revealing the complex back-story of the ARG narrative. Both of these
examples were massive successes and drew attention to the product they were
promoting.
ARGs require an immense amount of time and effort to implement, and require
everything from scriptwriters and actors to websites, physical clues and a large
support staff. We do not recommend that you try to implement one; they are
included here for interest.
6.1.2 Astroturfing
While controlled viral marketing is a viable and effective strategy, be careful
to avoid astroturfing. Astroturfing is the creation of a planned, controlled viral
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campaign that is disguised to look like an organic and spontaneous one. Since it
relies on deceit and subversion, and is often eventually revealed to be a planned
campaign, it is a very bad idea to use this strategy since the public will feel
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cheated.
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A controlled viral campaign requires a lot of planning and research, and an equal
measure of luck. Even if you carefully craft a media message that taps into the
preferences of your target audience and distribute it to the correct influencers,
you are not guaranteed success. As with any social media, consider carefully
whether the strategy is appropriate to your brand and whether the risk is worth
the considerable effort and resources required. Viral marketing is best suited
to popular, mainstream products aimed at young, connected audiences. If your
product doesn’t fall in this category, it is unlikely that viral marketing will work
well for you.
Easy sharing in a digital world is almost a given, because online messages are, by
their very natures, easy to duplicate. Therefore, every single barrier that you put
in place – like forced registration, delays in access or long download times – will
slow your campaign significantly; people will become impatient and will move on
to something else. There are several factors that make content easy to share.
First, viewing the message should not involve any lengthy sign-up or registration
processes; ideally, none at all.
Second, it should be available in the most popular formats and on the most widely
used platforms: for example, a video clip should be available on YouTube, Vimeo
and at least one local site, like Zoopy or MyVideo; a text-based document is best
created in Microsoft Word or PDF.
Lastly, facilitate sharing by embedding the content on your page and including one-
click sharing links to Facebook, Twitter and the most popular news aggregators.
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One-click sharing
To enable simple and quick sharing of your content, you can add a tool like AddThis
(www.addthis.com) to your page. Simply visit the link, select the type of buttons
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you want to include, click “Get your button” and follow the instructions for adding
the tool on the next page. AddThis even allows you to add analytics, which is
highly recommended for tracking clicks. Be aware that you will need to know the
basics of HTML code to insert the tool yourself; if you are uncomfortable with this,
speak to your web developer or IT department.
Examples of one-click sharing tools. Every icon is a button that lets you share
content instantly.
Finally, the viewer must be motivated to share the campaign message by some
personal benefit. This can be as minor as entertaining some friends or increasing
their social capital by sharing new, interesting material or as significant as receiving
a special offer, discount or winning a prize. People are motivated by the need to
be popular and cool, by greed, competition and urgency. If your viral campaign can
take advantage of these human traits, it will have an added chance at success.
2. Start planning your campaign by deciding what you want to achieve and how
you will measure your success. Make sure that your infrastructure is in place
(for example, that your website is ready or that you have your advertised
product in stock) and that you are ready to handle a potentially large increase
in visitors.
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3. Develop a sharable message that will appeal to your community. This can be
a video, game, text, image or any other media.
share it further. If the message has been well crafted, your community should
be more than happy to pass it on. Make the message available through as
many channels as possible, but especially the most popular and accessible
ones.
5. Measure, measure, measure. Keep a close watch on your web analytics and
use other tools, like Google Alerts, to monitor the spread of your message.
7. Analyse the results of your campaign. Return to your original goals and see
whether you managed to achieve them, and assess what successes and
failures you experienced. Take these into account for your next campaign.
6.2.5 Benefits
• A successful viral marketing campaign can bring in large numbers of customers
and create valuable exposure from your brand. It is also an indicator that you
understand your target market.
• Once you’ve made the initial investment, your message spreads without any
effort on your part, meaning that you are getting essentially free advertising.
• You can experience both short-term and long-term gains as people visit your
site to find out more, become customers or recall your memorable campaign
down the line.
• You have no control over your content once it is released, meaning that
anyone could distort or modify it. Similarly, negative content may spread
without your control.
• If your target market is not responsive to the message, the campaign will fail
and may generate negative publicity. In addition, if you attempt to disguise
your campaign as an organic and spontaneous one by using astroturfing, the
backlash from your audience will likely be severe.
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7. Summary
This chapter taught you the ins and out of planning and executing a successful
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social media campaign. To achieve this, you learned that you must:
1. Decide on the budget, personnel and time expenditure you want to commit
to social media marketing.
2. Analyse your target audience and pick the appropriate platforms to reach
them on.
3. Create your social networking profiles and populate them with useful,
informative and positive content.
5. In an ongoing process, update your profiles with new material, media and
campaigns. Also, listen to what is being said about your brand and monitor
the sentiment of users. Use web analytics tools to help you with both of
these factors.
7. Once you have established a large core community, try your hand at creating
viral content.
8. References
1. The history of social networking: www.digitaltrends.com/features/the-
history-of-social-networking/
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social-network-marketing-know-what-youre-getting-into
marketing.html
10. E-Marketing (5th edition). Strauss, J. and Frost, R. (2009). Prentice Hall.
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CHAPTER 8
Key concepts
Evaluating your online marketing efforts, return on investment (ROI), using feedback
from current marketing efforts to inform future decisions on budgeting and strategy,
converting web visitors into customers, click through rate.
CHAPTER 8:
WEb AnAlyTics And
conVERsion oPTimisATion
1. Introduction
In the last seven chapters, you have learned how to execute an email campaign,
set up social and viral strategies, create PPC ad campaigns, write for the web,
optimise your website for search engines and build a well-structured, user-friendly
website.
• How can your current marketing efforts change the way you make future
decisions regarding budgets and strategies?
• Did you convert web visitors into customers? If yes, what is your click-through
rate?
All costs, online behaviours and goal conversion rates need to be measured.
There’s an old adage in the advertising industry – 50% of your ad spend works and
the other 50% doesn’t. The problem is that nobody can pinpoint exactly where that
money is well spent, and where it is wasted. The beauty of the online environment
is that you can see exactly what your ad spend is doing for you. Online returns are
no different from offline returns in that they need to be measured; online is just
much more measureable. In order to be measured, campaigns, websites and online
activity needs to be tracked. Without measuring your marketing activity, there is
no way of calculating whether your marketing efforts were successful, whether
goals were achieved, and how much each goal cost. Welcome to web analytics.
Web analytics is the attempt to understand online user behaviour by using key
tools that track, measure, analyse and report on web usage. The objective is firstly
to learn more about how your existing online users interact with your brand online,
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and secondly to learn from this data in order to improve your website optimisation,
attract new online visitors to your website and increase your conversion rate.
Conversion optimisation is the process of maximising the percentage of website
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visitors who complete a desired action, thus increasing the conversion rate of
visitor to customer.
• Learn what tools to use to measure and analyse online behaviour (sections
4 and 5).
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page tagging. Page tagging is the most popular way of collecting web analytics
data today. Every time a page of a website is requested (e.g. when someone clicks
on a link that takes them to that page), this JavaScript code is automatically run
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in the web browser and sends information to a remote server. The data is saved,
processed and displayed as website activity. Website owners are able to view
charts and reports to measure the success of their online business.
Google reshaped web analytics in 2005 when it purchased Urchin and released its
free analytics tool, Google Analytics.
Today, more and more marketers have discovered the value of online data. Their
thinking has shifted from “How many hits did our website get?” to “How many
visitors did we convert to buyers?” As reports become more sophisticated and
user friendly, marketers are able to analyse the behaviour of individual visitors,
make both qualitative and quantitative hypotheses, assess patterns and take
action to improve sales and marketing initiatives. Understanding the psychology
behind online behaviour takes time, specialist input, lengthy data analysis and
reporting. It is very easy for people who are new to online marketing to get
overwhelmed by the amount of statistics available.
Web analysis will continue to evolve with innovative new tools such as Crazy Egg
(www.crazyegg.com), which uses heat maps to display the clusters and density
of clicks on a web page (discussed in section 5.3). Google Analytics (www.
google.com/analytics) is still the trendsetter, but the amount of data may feel
overwhelming at first. Remember: it’s not the data that counts, but rather the
interpretation and action taken as a result of it – for example, analysing the top
keywords used to search for your website and deciding what changes should
be made to your PPC campaign, SEO and meta data. Avinash Kaushik, a well-
respected online marketing expert, says it’s important to remember that data
does not amount to insight by itself. The problem is not the amount of data you
have. Analysing clicks is only the “what”, but you need to know the “why” – the
intent of online users when they are searching, browsing and interacting with your
website.
Using Google Analytics in conjunction with other analytics tools like Woopra (www.
woopra.com), which provides a more engaging experience with real-time data, will
put you in a good position to track trends and gain insight into your customers’
online behaviour. This module will outline the fundamentals of web analytics, which
tools to use, how to start tracking user behaviour and what key statistics to focus
on.
• Monitor your visitors and users. Web analytics can provide key metrics
and statistics such as visits, unique visits, bounce rates, top content, top
keywords, referrer sites and traffic source. (These terms will be explained in
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information to take actions like changing the content on top landing pages,
changing or adding to the navigation, adding additional calls to action on the
home page or restructuring URLs.
• Formulate a sales and internet marketing plan. After analysing the web data,
key insights can be drawn from reports, which can have a direct effect on
marketing plans. Customer trends online may help marketers leverage a
specific product or target a certain geographical location merely by analysing
data to see the top traffic sources. PPC campaigns may change keyword
bids or email campaigns may highlight different products due to seasonal
consumer trends. Even the frequency and time of day affect the success of
a marketing campaign.
• Measure the profit contribution from online marketing initiatives. All businesses
that have an online presence should use web analytics to calculate their
internet marketing profit contributions. Using tools such as Google Analytics
also enables you to create goals with specific values. Completing these goals
helps monitor goal conversion and site optimisation. More on this later in this
chapter.
• Predict future trends. Over time you will start to see trends in online behaviour:
when traffic to your site is high, which pages are more popular, what causes
an increase in traffic and where the majority of visitors come from (visitor
source). These trends help predict future behaviour, making it easier to plan
and execute future marketing campaigns based on past experience.
• See real-time data about online users. Being able to see your number of
visitors within seconds of sending out an email campaign or posting a viral
video on your site is invaluable information. Real-time data enables you to act
and react in real time. See the detailed discussion on Woopra later on in this
chapter for more detail about real-time data analysis.
• Monitor social media activity. Keeping up to date with social media activity
and with what your customers are saying, sharing and writing about your
brand is critical. saidWot (www.saidwot.com), Trackur (www.trackur.com),
Sentiment Metric (www.sentimentmetrics.com) and Social Mention (www.
socialmention.com) are just a few examples of key analytics tools that
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provide real-time data analysis on blogs, social networks, video sharing and
other media-driven platforms (more about this in section 5). These tools
will enable you to analyse key brand influences, manage your brand’s online
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reputation and gain more insight into your consumers’ online activity.
Follow these steps to generate the tracking code required for Google Analytics, a
free solution provided by Google. Open a web browser, go to www.google.com/
analytics and log in to your Google Account. Once logged in, click on the “Access
Analytics” button.
1. New Account Signup. There are four steps to the account creation process.
First, you will need to add your URL, create an account name and choose a time
zone and country.
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2. Contact information. Next, you will need to add your last and first name as well
as your country or territory.
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3. Accept User Agreement. You will need to agree to Google’s terms of service
and accept the user agreement.
Once you have completed this four-step process, you have successfully added
your website to Google Analytics. Wait 24 hours before checking for data in your
account. It is important to note that data is only captured from the day the
tracking is added, so it is best to add tracking before a new website goes live so
that you have data from inception.
Once you have successfully created a Google Analytics account and Google is
tracking your website’s data, you will see a screen similar to the one below. There
will also be a link to “view report” which will take you to the “dashboard” of your
account.
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by all the statistics, metrics and parameters. Don’t be. There are a few key statistics
that every marketer should know and – depending on your industry, marketing
objectives and tactics – you will need to analyse some additional statistics. When
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you start to feel more comfortable with Google Analytics, you can explore more
complex statistics that will help you understand online user behavioural trends.
Visits. The number of unique sessions initiated by a reader. This statistic counts
every time someone visits your site. If a visitor is inactive on your site for 30
minutes or more, it is counted as additional visits but not as an additional visitor.
It is important to understand the difference between clicks and visits. Clicks (in
an AdWords report) are the number of times your advertisement was clicked on
by visitors.
Page views. The number of pages that were viewed during these visits. Page views
are tracked by Google Analytics. If a visitor hits reload after reaching a page, this
will be counted as an additional page view. If a user navigates to a different page
and then returns to the original page, this is counted as a page view as well.
Unique page views. This statistic aggregates page views by the same user during
the same session. Unique page views are therefore the number of sessions during
which that page was viewed one or more times by the same visitor.
Bounce rate. The percentage of visits in which the person instantly leaves your
site within seconds of arriving.
Average time on site. The average length of time people stay on your site.
Percentage of new visits. Percentage of people visiting your site for the first time.
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Top content. A list of pages ranked by the amount of traffic they get. These
are the key pages that you want to use to direct visitors to other pages on your
site, as they get the most traffic. Use strong calls to action so that visitors are
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On the left hand side of the Google Analytics dashboard, you will see a number of
options. Each one will be discussed in detail (except Intelligence beta).
4.2.1 Visitors
It is important to note that, depending on your industry, sales cycle and product,
each statistic may have a unique significance. For example, take new versus
returning visitors. If you are trying to build up a long-term relationship with
customers and would like visitors to return to your site regularly, you will need
to provide fresh content to incentivise people to return and therefore returning
visitors should be high (e.g. on a news website). If you are selling something with
a short sales cycle, you want visitors to land on your site and purchase something
in the same session. All information about that product needs to be available and
accessible and the product must be easy to purchase. If visitors cannot find what
they are looking for in three clicks, they will be sure to click off your website and
not return.
• Absolute unique visitors. This is a difficult term. Image you visit the same
website three times in one week from the same computer using the same
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browser. You will be counted as one new unique visitor with three visits.
• Bounce rate. Each industry has different bounce rate averages, and your
marketing strategy can have a significant effect on your bounce rate. For
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example, if you set up a PPC campaign with general keywords and a high bid,
your ad will appear more frequently in search engines but your ad campaign is
not targeted. People are clicking on your ad but will immediately leave if the
site’s content is not relevant to their search query.
Take a look at GetSmarter’s benchmark against all sites of a similar size: its visits
are 1,002% higher than the industry average.
• Map overlay. The map overlay is very interesting as you can see where in the
world the majority of your visitors come from. In the case of GetSmarter,
most visits are from South Africa, followed by the United Kingdom and then
the United States. You can even filter by city, sub-continent region and
continent.
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Africa. Unfortunately, unlike the United Kingdom, it is difficult to tell the user’s
suburb based on their IP address. Telkom’s IP address blocks are badly managed.
The best scenario is usually to pinpoint the city. The above table does mix cities
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Traffic sources:
1. Direct traffic. Online users can type your web address straight into the web
browser or can click on bookmark. For example, if I open my browser and type
www.bloomberg.com straight into the browser address bar, not the search
bar, this visit is counted as direct traffic.
2. Referring sites. This traffic source is visitors coming from other websites that
send traffic to your site. This is where affiliate networks, content distributors,
banner ads on other sites and link building comes into play.
3. Search engines. Traffic coming from PPC campaigns and organic search
results. In this pie chart, the majority of traffic (61.28%) comes from search
engines, while only 3.43% comes from referring sites. GetSmarter uses PPC
campaigns extensively for marketing purposes, which dramatically increases
the search engine traffic. You can also click on “search engine traffic” and see
which search engine is generating the most traffic.
4. Other. Any traffic coming from other sources, for example email campaigns.
Keywords. Top search terms within a given date range for your website – in other
words, which keywords people used to find your website. Keyword visits, pages/
visit, bounce rate and average time on site statistics are available for each keyword.
This information can help you review your existing keyword list for SEO and online
advertising. If you notice a high-traffic keyword that is not currently optimised,
you might want to optimise your website accordingly. Remember to separate
branded from non-branded keywords when doing research. Branded keywords are
names of companies and brands (e.g. GetSmarter) whereas non-branded keywords
are words like “marketing”, “how to write a proposal” and so on.
An online user will only type in a branded keyword if they know the brand; most
users know what they are looking for (e.g. “online education”) but do not know
where to look.
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Analytics will track these clicks as “Campaigns event tracking”; as long as a link
is tracked, it will be there. For example, say you want to send a newsletter to
existing customers in November 2011. The name of the Newsletter is “Nov 2011
newsletter”. Below is an example of a link builder for a newsletter. Please note
that no additional technical work is required. As long as you have set up a Google
Analytics account and know which incoming links you want to track, follow the
steps below to learn how to build custom link tracking.
www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55578
1. Tracking. Fill in your information in the provided fields. Make sure that, when
you complete each field in the link builder, you use an underscore ( _ ) between
each word so that it’s easier to read the tracking.
www.getsmarter.co.za/?utm_source=newsletter_Oct_2011&utm_
medium=email&utm_term=holiday_specials&utm_campaign=Oct_2011_
newsletter
Below is a list of campaign definitions. Make sure you include at least the original
URL, source, medium and name of the campaign in order to track the link.
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3. Check Google Analytics for your campaign statistics. In the traffic source
section, you will see a “Campaigns” section. Here, you will find a list of your
campaigns. Each campaign will have statistics on visits, pages/visit, average time
on site, percentage of new visits and bounce rate.
4.2.3 Content
Content is an exciting area of data to analyse because often what the marketer
assumes will be the most popular page on the site or the top landing page is not
necessarily the case. Online users do not think the same way and neither do search
engines. Once you have analysed the data, make sure that you take that insight
and action it, make changes to your content, add links and calls to action to your
top landing pages and make changes to your top exit pages to ensure that people
stay on your site longer. Always think of ways to improve the user experience.
Top landing pages. Landing pages are those pages that people land on when they
first arrive at your site. In theory, your online advertising efforts such as PPC
campaigns, viral campaigns, email and banners should have a strong influence in
deciding which pages should be your top landing pages. If your analytics data does
not reflect this, you need to find where this traffic is coming from and why.
Top exit pages. The last page a visitor was on before they left the website. These
top exit pages provide critical insight. If your website goals are to convert visitors
into online buyers, then you want the “Thank you – purchase confirmation” page
to be high on the list of exit pages instead of the product detail page. Think about
the user journey of your customers. Why are people on your site and what are
they looking for? No two customers are the same; you need to guide your visitors
around the site and encourage them to follow a specific user journey.
For example, imagine you are an African volunteer company. If someone lands on
your home page, you may want them to do the following:
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If the majority of people are leaving on your home page, then you know that your
content, calls to action and messages are not compelling enough to motivate
someone to click deeper into your site.
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Site overlay. Google Analytics has a fascinating tool that allows you see a visual
overlay of the entire home page of your website, and for each link you can see the
number of “clicks” and the goal conversion (more on this in 4.2.5). It’s interesting
to see, for example, that project management has the most clicks, followed by
financial management and internet marketing. The site overlay is a great tool to
gain some insight into online behaviour. Ask yourself the following questions:
• What will happen to the click-through rate when I change an image or the
position of some content on the page?
A perfect example of how this type of tracking can be utilised is for banner ads,
downloaded documents and videos on your website. For example, say you are
travel agency and you have a video on your home page. When someone clicks
play, you can track this as an event in Google Analytics. If you would like more
information on how to set up event tracking, visit
code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/tracking/eventtrackerguide.html.
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convert a visitor to participate in some action item on your website. For example:
• Download a brochure
Google Analytics allows you to create 20 conversion goals per profile. Goals are
really page views: you essentially tell Google to remember every time someone
views a particular page or completes a specific action. There are three types of
goals: URL destination, time on site and pages/visit. Only URL destination will be
discussed in detail.
For example, you want to know how many people have downloaded the brochure
for the internet marketing course. Think about the user experience. A visitor
goes to GetSmarter’s website and decides to download the internet marketing
course information pack. When they click on the button to download the brochure,
a lightbox appears. Once they fill in their first name an email address and hit
“proceed”, this event is tracked in Google. The visitor can now download the
information pack and you both have the visitor’s email address and have counted
the download.
1. Log in to Google Analytics. Click the “edit” link on the Google Analytics
website profile page.
2. Click the “edit” link on the settings column for the first goal.
3. Enter the page that, when viewed, constitutes the completion of the goal
(e.g. www.nameofwebsite.com/thank_you.html).
• Active goal. If you want the goal to be active, leave it marked “on” or it won’t
be tracked.
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• Match type. This is slightly technical setting. Leave it on “head match” if you
are not a programmer.
• Goal name. Name your goal. Make sure you will be able to identify it in the
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Leave the rest of the form blank and click “save”. After a few days, go to the
dashboard in Google Analytics and click on the “Goals” tab. You will now see your
goals and their conversion rates.
Goal funnel
At the bottom of the goal creation form there is a “Goal Funnel” option. You will
not learn how to create a funnel in this course, but for those who would like to
take analytics further in the future, it is valuable to know that a funnel is a series
of pages leading up to the goal URL. For example, the funnel may include steps
in your checkout process that lead you to the thank you page (goal). To create a
funnel, you would list all the pages that you want a user to click through in order
to achieve a particular goal. For example, someone coming to the home page will
click on “Project Management course” and then on “Registration”. These are two
steps in a funnel to complete the registration “conversion goal”.
Google Analytics has been the leader in web analytics for several years and has a
growing following. As your understanding of analytics grows, so does your desire
to take web analytics to the next step. Here are a few links that will be useful as
you grow and develop your understanding of Google Analytics:
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analytics.html
medium=et&utm_campaign=en_us&hl=en
5.1 Woopra
There are many web analytics tools available. Though the most popular is Google
Analytics, a new competitor recently entered the market and has made quite a
stir: Woopra (www.woopra.com), a real-time, desktop web analytics application.
Do not compare Woopra with the market leading Google Analytics, but rather
enjoy the benefit of both applications.
• Cost. Woopra does have a free online version (trial for 3 months with major
limitations on features and functionality). Ads are displayed at the bottom
of the page, page views are restricted to 30,000 per month and data is
only saved for three months. Their desktop application packages range from
$4.95 to $179.95 per month. Google Analytics is free.
• Real time. Woopra is a more attractive interface and data is displayed in real
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time: it’s instant. This does mean you’re using more bandwidth and possibly
that your website loading time will slow. Make sure you have an adequate
internet connection and enough bandwidth. Google Analytics is web-based
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(no bandwidth issues) but data is not displayed in real time and is only
updated every few hours.
• Live chat. You can tag and chat to live visitors while they are on your website.
That’s correct. In the “live stream view”, you can see the visitors’ personal
details, how they got to your website, their location and their visitor history.
When you click “start chat”, the visitor will get a lightbox with a message
from you asking their permission to chat to them.
• User interface. Woopra’s interface is far less intimidating and more user
friendly, but it does not have as many features as Google Analytics. Everything
in Woopra is one click away, quick and simple. Google Analytics does have a
customisable dashboard but is not user friendly for beginners. It does however
offer some incredibly complex and valuable tracking features.
• Conversion goals. Google Analytics wins hands down here. Woopra does not
have a goal function in their program.
In a nutshell, Woopra wins over Google Analytics for its interface’s “wow” factor:
it is simple to use and easy for beginners to really engage with their visitors and
get excited about web analytics. Google Analytics is not real time but it does
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have more bells and whistles, plus the integration with other Google services like
AdWords. There is no one perfect web analytics tool; just remember that it’s the
insight you get from the data that is important – make sure you take action and
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Here are a few more web analytics tools you may want to investigate:
• Mint: www.haveamint.com
• Omniture: www.omniture.com
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Overview: Analyse the visitors, visits and page views for the month and per hour
every day.
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By analysing each page of your website, you can see which opportunities are
being missed and which calls to action, images, copy and images are not working
effectively. By using Crazy Egg in conjunction with your analytics solutions, you can
improve your website’s content and layout and hopefully increase your conversion
rate of visitors to customers.
The cost is a minimum of R70 per month (max. R700 p/m), tracking up to 10,000
visits per month on a maximum of 10 pages. If you do have a large website with
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over 100 pages, you will have to opt for the $99 option. The actual setup process
is very simple and you can subscribe on a month-to-month basis. Here are the
pricing plans: www.crazyegg.com/plans.
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Source: www.crazyegg.com
Have you tried to quantify the ROI from social and viral campaigns?
But how can you track the value of social media when there are so many monitoring
tools to choose from, so much clutter to filter through to gain a little insight and
just not enough time in the day to monitor everything?
• Not enough time in the day. Information overload is evident in the world of
social media. It can feel very overwhelming.
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There is none, so you will need to work out for yourself what keywords are
of most value and what retweets, Facebook comments and social trends to
monitor. Measuring social media is not an exact science. Twenty retweets will
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not automatically convert into a new sale, 30 comments of a viral video will
not guarantee 10 new customers. Your social media strategy should always
support your overall marketing strategy and ultimately point people back to
your website and complete a conversion goal.
Now, how to tackle the monitoring of social media? There are many tools to
choose from. If you have the money and time, you can opt for a specialist service
like Radian6, Sysomos, Sentiment Metrics (some offer free trials so you can test
before you buy), but most of these tools have little value in the South African
social market.
There are also several free tools, either platform specific or general, which combine
platform statistics together.
Make sure you use more than one tool to compare social trends across platforms.
It’s often good to dedicate one person on your marketing team to monitor and
manage your social platforms on a daily basis. Make sure you also follow your
competition with these tools to ensure that you see every move they make. If
you are promoting products, competitions, specials and news updates on social
platforms, they will most probably be doing the same.
Here are a few social media monitoring platforms to get you started:
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6. Summary
Web analytics is not an option; it is requirement. All businesses, big or small, need
some way to objectively track, measure and analyse online user behaviour in order
to draw effective insights and optimise their websites, increase traffic, grow their
customer databases and increase sales. The key to web analytics is first to define
what you want to achieve. Make sure you have answered the following questions
before you start signing up for multiple analytics tools.
• What are your website conversion goals? Do you want your visitors to
complete a contact form, download an information pack, buy a product,
watch a promotional video or request more information?
• Have you mapped out the user journey for each goal? What is the ideal path a
user should take to complete each goal? An online user sees a tweet about a
competition to win a weekend away > clicks on the link which takes them to a
competition entry page > submits the entry > arrives on a “thank you” page
with a list of tours > clicks on a tour > views the tour detail page > completes
a “request for more information” form. The goal is complete.
• What social media networks are you and your competitors using?
• Have you set targets? What are your expected traffic, conversion rate,
downloads, enquiries and sales?
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users are reading, clicking on, interested in and, more importantly, what key online
behavioural trends you can leverage to succeed in future marketing campaigns.
Most importantly, web analytics is a time-consuming and long-term strategy for
increasing your conversion rate of visitors to customer.
7. References
1. Google Analytics: www.google.com/analytics
2. Woopra: www.woopra.com
9. Twitter is the only social media monitoring software you need: bettercloser.
com/twitter-is-the-only-social-media-monitoring-software-you-need/
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CHAPTER 9
MOBILE MARKETING
Key concepts
Defining mobile marketing, mobile technology in South Africa, key benefits of mobile
marketing, identifying and applying mobile marketing techniques, leading applications and
services, mobile codes of conduct and risks, consumer behaviour of Generation Z.
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MobilE MARkETing
1. Introduction
Can you imagine what the world was like without mobile phones? Say ten years
ago? How did you communicate with friends, make appointments, wake up in
the morning, manage your calendar or remember telephone numbers? Just about
everyone has a cellphone today. The purpose of this device is no longer to just
make a phone call, but instead to be a means of gaining access to information,
different channels of communication, payment and more. As mobile device
penetration grows, so do the marketing opportunities.
• Learn about mobile codes of conduct and potential risks (sections 7 and 8).
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portable, pocket-sized electronic device that allows people to make phone calls
and send data (voice, images, text).
For the purpose of this course, you do not need to understand the technology
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used to build a cellphone, and terms like GSM, CDMA and TDMA are not important.
However, what is important to understand is the history of cellphone technology,
for two reasons. Firstly, different marketing techniques require certain levels of
mobile sophistication, both from the handset and user. Secondly, depending on
your target market’s demographics and communication trends, you may want to
choose a different mobile tactic (e.g. send an SMS campaign or use barcodes,
coupons or augmented reality). Each tactic relies on your target market having
access to a specific mobile device or tool and a certain level of mobile usage
sophistication.
2.1.1 1G
Cellphone technology has developed extensively since the first basic analogue
phone in 1973 (built by Motorola), which acted almost like a radio, sending and
receiving calls by using analogue signals. These are the first-generation (1G)
cellphones.
2.1.2 2G
Along came second-generation (2G) cellular technology – digital cellphones in the
1990s. Digital transmissions were used instead of analogue signals and were much
more efficient as more calls could be made at the same time. This was also the
start of SMS (short message service), also know as a “text messaging”: a short
message exchanged between cellphones or between fixed lines (like your home
Telkom phone line) and cellphones.
Back in 1998, Finland and Sweden were already using cellphones to pay for vending
machines and car parking. Commercial launches followed in 1999 in Norway. The
first commercial payment system to mimic banks and credit cards was launched
in the Philippines in 1999 simultaneously by mobile operators Globe and Smart.
2.1.3 3G
However, for most societies, cellphones only became part of everyday life in the
mid 2000s. Third-generation (3G) phones emerged with the demand for increased
data services – welcome smartphones. Smartphones like the Apple iPhone (like an
iPod except you can make phone calls and connect to the internet), BlackBerry
and Android phones (Google-owned open source version of the iPhone) are used
for any online task that a desktop computer can perform. You can make calls, SMS,
MMS (send a multimedia message), take photos and connect to the web using Wi-Fi
(Wireless Fidelity). Wi-Fi is a system that allows wireless communication between
mobile devices and the web. You can also use most 3G phones as a Wi-Fi router to
connect your laptop to the internet. Suddenly, a phone is no longer a device for
making phone calls, but rather a device that can be used to communicate across
multiple platforms, share information and even make purchases.
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Note: Do not get smartphones confused with PDAs (personal digital assistants).
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PDAs are electronic organisers of daily information and activities and are capable
of syncing and sharing information with your PC. It is not a PC replacement but
rather an extension.
The mobile web is relatively new, and there are still many challenges. For example,
many websites are not “phone ready” – they are difficult to view and navigate on
the much smaller screen of a cellphone. It is difficult to input information with the
small phone keypad. Connections can be slow and unreliable.
Today, mobile capabilities have grown extensively: for example, the number of
people using cellphones to connect to Facebook has grown from 20 million to
65 million in less than a year. The mobile web is particularly popular in countries
in which the traditional wired infrastructure is lagging: in Africa, the cellphone
is by far the most popular method of getting online. To give an indication of
this, research done in 2009 revealed that 85% of small businesses run by black
people in South Africa rely solely on cellphones, and 97% of people in Tanzania
have access to a cellphone compared to 28% for fixed phone lines. Google has
also revealed that one sixth of all Google searches in South Africa are done on
cellphones – the highest ratio in the world.
Today, South Africa has a 100% cellphone penetration rate (reached in the last
quarter of 2008). This means that although only about 70% of the population
owns a cellphone, everyone at least has access to one. With a population of 49
million, that’s a lot of people. As a continent, Africa’s growth rate in mobile is
climbing quickly too. Between 2002 and 2009, Africa saw the number of cellphone
subscribers climb at an annual rate of 49.3% compared to that of 27.5% in Brazil
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and Asia, according to Ernst & Young. By 2012, market penetration in Africa can
be expected to climb to more than 60%. It is evident from these statistics that
the majority of people in Africa have bypassed the fixed-line telephone and gone
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straight to mobile technology. South Africa only reached 6.8 million internet users
by March 2011 (13% internet penetration), which does not compare to 100%
mobile penetration.
Marketers in South Africa can therefore not ignore the mobile space. As smartphone
prices go down, Africans are becoming a new segment of internet users. Mobile
technology has enabled a new way of life by providing affordable and flexible
access to communications, multimedia, mobile banking and web browsing for
millions of people. Marketers also have a new marketing segment to communicate
with on multiple platforms.
• As of May 2011, South Africa has been serving more than 850 million mobile
ad impressions each month.
• Highly targeted. One phone, one number, one customer. However, note that
in South Africa, people do share SIM cards and phones and there is no data
available about pay-as-you-go customers. With opt-in marketing, you at least
know who you are communicating with before sending out the campaign.
• Two-way dialogue. You can communicate between customer and brand very
easily using mobile web, SMS, email, phone calls and more. Customers are not
just there to sell to, but also to build a relationship with.
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SMS marketing is the communication between brand, marketer and customer using
a cellphone’s short message service (SMS). One can also think of SMS marketing
as a portable billboard, magazine, TV or radio: the message is carried around with
the customer, it’s personal, location sensitive, potentially invasive and deliberate.
MMS (multimedia message service) marketing is the next level of SMS marketing.
Most modern phones and all smartphones have colour screens and can accept
images, video and audio clips in their wireless messages. This enables marketers
to send colour messages to customers.
SMS messages have a maximum of 160 characters, whereas MMS messages allow
the transmission of 300KB of data. There are around 30 million handsets that are
MMS-capable in South Africa and that number increases every day (www.bmi-t.
co.za).
Sending SMS and MMS messages is the first step to making cellphones a personal
channel of communication. It offers an opportunity not just to push a message to
consumers but also to pull a response. By including a common short code (CSC)
– a short telephone number, usually 5 digits long – into an MMS or SMS message,
marketers are able to get customers to participate in polling, voting, making a
donation, ordering ring tones and signing up for services.
A good example of CSC in use is M-Net’s Idols television show. Viewers can vote
for singers by messaging a CSC.
In order to send SMS and MMS campaigns, you have to use a service provider.
Clickatell (www.clickatell.com) and Mobilitrix (www.mobilitrix.com) are two
excellent providers of mobile marketing. Before you sign up for a service provider,
make sure you compare prices, products and distribution options first.
Mobilitrix has a very good illustration of how mobile marketing fits into the bigger
picture of an integrated marketing strategy:
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(Source: Mobilitrix)
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When creating a mobi version of your website, make sure that you keep the
branding, look and feel consistent with your main website so that customers have
a smooth transition from PC to mobile. Think about what sort of information
customers would want on their mobile devices. As mobile web browsers become
more sophisticated, the demand for relevant, real-time information such as sports
results, flight times, immediate weather updates and the latest news grows.
Once you have designed and developed your mobi site, go to ready.mobi and
check the mobile-readiness of your site. MobiReady gives you a score out of 5. If
you are new to mobi sites and would like to see what sites are available in mobile
format, visit 7335.mobi and search for a site of interest.
Visit Mobile AdWords for more information on promoting your business using
mobi sites: adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/static.py?hl=en&page=guide.
cs&guide=23634&topic=23638.
Google has taken it a step further: in 2010, Google introduced geo-targeted mobile
display ads for iPhone and Android websites. When mobile users view “businesses
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in their area”, advertisers can now include their location and phone number in the
display ads.
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Infrared marketing is one of the oldest forms of mobile marketing. By sending free
infrared waves within a range of one metre, you can transfer information from one
device to another (e.g. from a shop window to a consumer standing in front of
it). Unfortunately, due to the limited range, infrared marketing has not had much
success.
Bluetooth technology has been very successful is densely populated areas, such
as shopping centres, that are frequented by your target market – this is proximity
marketing. A broadcasting station is set up in a highly frequented location; if a
device that has an active Bluetooth connection comes in close contact with the
“hotspot” (broadcasting station), it is sent a message which it can choose to
accept or reject. These messages usually contain text, video or audio.
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30 feet) and a relatively new application. It is also free for marketer and consumer.
However, there is a debate as to whether Bluetooth is yet another high-tech form
of spam, since you are sending unsolicited messages. That being said, due to
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the very small transmission radius and the need for users to accept the message
download, this is very much an “opt in” means of advertising.
Case study
In 2007, WCIT with Blip Systems in Denmark tested the use of Bluetooth technology
as a marketing strategy in South African shopping malls. In the larger malls, they
set up information desks with an electric reader that read the unique IP address
of the Bluetooth-enabled phones. Customers had to choose to participate in this
voluntary database by transmitting their address and shopping interests over
Bluetooth. Marketers were then able to send targeted messages to interested
parties. WCIT also set up foot-count systems in malls (to track mall traffic). By
2008, fifty malls had these information desks. Today, 11 malls use proximity
marketing but 20 malls use a foot-count system. Bluetooth has been very helpful
in tracking customer movements.
• A free item
• A buy-one-get-one-free deal
• Multiple purchases. If you buy a specific product, you get a something else for
free.
Mobile vouchers are similar to coupons except instead of offering a discount, the
voucher acts as the equivalent to cash and is not restricted to a specific item.
There are usually restrictions on the use of the voucher (e.g. one per customer
with a validity period).
2D barcodes are graphical images that store information horizontally and vertically.
Barcodes are also known as quick response codes because they enable quick
database access. Barcodes can either be sent to a customer by SMS (see the
Target example above) or be used as part of an outdoor marketing campaign.
Barcodes can easily be read with smartphones (equipped with a barcode reader)
by taking a picture of the barcode. Have a look at the “How easy it is to read 2D
barcodes” video to understand just how simple this process is with a smartphone.
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competition. Spectators could scan the barcodes and download videos, data
and pictures.
developing coverage.
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“Our research shows that South Africans are becoming comfortable with cellphone
banking, but precisely half of general banking customers are still nervous of it,
citing trust as their major concern,” said Arthur Goldstuck, MD of World Wide
Worx.
“We have seen this rapid adoption driven by our menu service, although I believe
that WAP will start to play a more important role in future,” said FNB mCommerce
CEO Len Pienaar.
Every major bank in South Africa offers cellphone banking. The principle behind
cellphone banking is exactly the same as online banking: making banking as
accessible, easy and immediate as possible. Cellphone banking allows you to view
bank statements and balances, transfer money between accounts, purchase
airtime and make payments. It’s important to note that although the penetration
of mobile banking is higher than internet banking, the former is predominantly
used for basic transactions (checking bank statements and account balances and
buying more airtime).
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You can find out more about the services that individual banks offer here:
• ABSA: www.absa.co.za/Absacoza/Individual/Ways-to-Bank/Anytime,-
Anywhere/Cellphone-Banking
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• FNB: www.fnb.co.za/cellphone-banking/cellphone-banking-faq.html
• Nedbank: www.nedbank.co.za/website/content/Products/product_detail.
asp?SubSubcatid=%201865&Subcatid=501&ProductID=102
5.5.1 Mowaly
Mowaly is a service that calls itself a “virtual mobile wallet” and works in conjunction
with Standard Bank’s MiMoney service. Users pay for and load MiMoney credits
into Mowaly “wallets” on their cellphones, and can spend these credits at Mowaly-
approved vendors. Here is how you can get connected to Mowaly.
1. Sign up for a Mowaly account at mowaly.co.za. You can use any web-enabled
cellphone with Mowaly.
2. Purchase MiMoney credits to put into your Mowaly account. You can do
this with an EFT (electronic fund transfer), a debit card or you can transfer
MiMoney from another Mowaly wallet for a small fee.
3. Visit a vendor that accepts Mowaly payments and choose a product. You can
find a list of vendors on the Mowaly website.
5.5.2 Fundamo
Fundamo (www.fundamo.com) is the world leader in mobile financial services
offering both mobile wallets and banking to 20 countries. In 2009, Fundamo
partnered with MTN to provide a mobile wallet solution to their cellphone customer.
Many Africans do not have a bank account. “MT MobileMoney” is a SIM-based
version of Fundamo’s mobile wallet specifically for MTN customers. You do not
need a bank account. MTN MobileMoney customers can use their phones for all
money-related services like:
• Buying airtime
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Note: MTN first tried to introduce mobile banking in 2005, ahead of the pack,
and did not succeed. Lack of consumer education and onerous FICA requirements
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5.5.3 Wizzit
Founded in 2004, WIZZIT Bank offers secure, low-cost, transactional bank
accounts to unbanked and under-banked South Africans through cellphones.
WIZZIT is a branchless banking business, so its customers can generally conduct
transactions without the need to visit bank branches, and they’re not required to
have an existing bank account in order to join. Unlike competitors such as FNB
and MTN, WIZZIT is compatible with early-generation cellphones that are popular
in low-income communities, and also caters to customers who use pay-as-you-go
cellphones.
• Full banking functionality, including debit orders, transfers and access to all
point-of-sale devices and ATMs
• Internet banking
Email:
You can use email from your phone or from your computer to update your status
or upload images, text and videos to Facebook. The uploaded content will appear
in your “Mobile Uploads” album. Of course, to use this service from your phone,
you will need to be able to send email from your phone. Facebook will send you
a personalised email address to use. To find out what your personal upload email
address is, visit the Facebook mobile page at www.facebook.com/mobile.
Mobile web:
You can browse the mobile version of the Facebook website with your phone. To
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interact with Facebook using its mobile website, you need a phone with a web
browser that is set up to go online. Point your phone’s browser at m.facebook.
com. The site will look different depending on what type of phone you are using –
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Applications: `
There are several mobile applications that allow you to interact with Facebook
from your phone. Some examples:
Through an application:
This is the most popular and user-friendly way of using Twitter on a cellphone.
There are many applications available. Some examples:
• Fring: www.fring.com/default.php.
You can access Twitter through your phone’s browser. There are several mobile
sites for Twitter that offer different levels of functionality.
5.6.3 MXit
MXit (www.mxit.com) is a free mobile application for cellphones and is very popular
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in the South African youth market. It has a registered user base over 19 million,
about 20 million logins per day and over 250 million messages sent and received
every day. Originating in South Africa, MXit is now being used by 120 countries
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daily. There are numerous services offered by MXit, from instant messaging to
mobile banking with MXit Moola (in conjunction with Standard Bank’s Beyond
Payments payment solution, MiMoney). MXit even has its own financial advisor,
JoeBanker, who handles your Moola. Many MXit users do not have bank accounts
but they do have mobile phones; MXit provides both a trendy lifestyle solution and
mobile banking.
In 2009, HDI Youth Marketers did a study on South African teens’ social media
usage, polling 5,300 urban youth between the ages of 8 and 22. For the third
year in a row, MXit won in the Coolest Website and Social Network categories.
Teenagers choose MXit over all other applications including Facebook and Google.
MXit is continually expanding its services as well as advertising programs for
marketers. Visit this link to find out how you can get involved: www.mxit.com/
content/ap/en/advertisers.
5.6.4 WWSA
Cellphones have become a point of social interaction on a professional level. “Who’s
who SA” (www.whoswhosa.co.za) is a South African-based iPhone application for
professionals. You are familiar with LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com), the web-based
professional social network, from chapter 7. WWSA is the South African mobile
version: its objective is to bring like-minded people together. It has also introduced
a location-based service, which will allow you to find companies around you, view
their profiles and connect with them.
5.6.5 Yoza
Mobile technology has expanded far beyond just text and voice calls into the realm
of ebooks and elearning. Yoza (www.Yoza.mobi) is a mobile website started by
M4Lit, one of the Shuttleworth Foundation’s projects, and offers short stories on
cellphones for free. Yoza is also available on MXit and its objective is to promote
reading and writing in the teen market. Initiatives such as Yoza could be perfect
sponsorship, partnership and marketing opportunities for companies that want to
leverage the ever-growing mobile market.
6. Applications
There are numerous mobile marketing applications, many of which have already
been mentioned earlier in this chapter. Below are four suggested mobile marketing
service providers.
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o Mobile CRM
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7. Code of conduct
When considering mobile marketing as a marketing technique, it is important to
be aware of the legislative environment of this tactic. It is very important to abide
by the code of conduct within the region in which you intend to send campaigns.
Mobile content providers, for example ExactMobile (www.exactmobile.co.za) in
South Africa, have also climbed on the mobile bandwagon with the sale of ring
tones, wallpapers, games and images for mobile devices. The ethical issues around
these providers are extremely pertinent, especially since they deal with a very
youthful and impressionable target market. Marketers are having a field day as
technology and marketing techniques have grown so quickly that legislation is
still trying to catch up. User privacy is an increasing concern and the protection
of consumer privacy rights by legislation is quickly developing in an attempt to
protect consumer personal information and privacy.
As the mobile marketing industry grows, consumer trust is a prerequisite for this
form of communication and persuasive marketing. To gain consumers’ confidence,
their privacy must be protected. Here are a few examples of threats to a consumer’s
privacy:
All of these threats are personal and could lead to serious consequences. If they
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are not taken care of with utmost sincerity, consumers will lose confidence in
mobile marketing. Local legislation should help service providers to ensure that
consumer privacy rights are protected.
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2. Push focused. If you’re using SMS as a push-focused selling tool, you are
unlikely to maintain an engaged audience. Do not send a marketing message
to a mass audience without adding any value or attempt to build a relationship
between the customer and your brand. Remember to consider the content
and timing of mobile campaigns very carefully.
3. Isolation. Don’t use mobile marketing in isolation. As with all online marketing
tactics we have learned in this course, mobile marketing is no exception to
the rule. Integrated with traditional techniques like radio, outdoor and print,
this technique will help support and incentivise customers to engage with
your mobile strategy (e.g. a poster placed in a store window with a number
to SMS to enter a competition).
5. One way. Using SMS marketing as a one-way communication tool. Use mobile
marketing as an interactive communication tool and not a one-way message
like print ads, which promote the brand but don’t encourage a response.
Make sure your message is action orientated. Think about timing – when is
the best time to sent a message so that customers are more likely to engage
and respond?
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Where you born before the birth on the internet? Imagine growing up in a world
where you have never lived a day without the web, cellphones and MP3 players.
Welcome to Generation Z: the current 12 to 20 year olds, born between the
early 1990s and late 2000s, and who will be driving consumer trends and media
consumption in the future. With the growth of mobile and online marketing over
the last 15 years in mind, consider the following media habits and trends of this
futurist generation.
• Television on demand. Why watch TV on a schedule when you can DVR shows
and watch in your own time?
• Mobile, mobile, mobile. They have never owned a landline and never will. Some
of them probably don’t even own a watch: it’s all on their phone.
• Trust. Teenagers are very trusting of friends and even strangers on social
networks, their new virtual reality.
• Willing to pay for content. Until 2005, no one wanted to pay for content
online, but times are changing. Generation Z expect to have to pay for online
content; if you want to watch a movie or download music or podcasts, you pay.
On the other hand, teenagers want to be able to choose to watch advertising
instead of paying and don’t mind watching advertising if the content is free.
• Community. Social networks are part of their daily lives; they don’t know how
to stay in contact with friends without being permanently connected online.
Communicating with friends is their number one activity – almost like a virtual
nightclub, you go there to hang out without parental supervision.
• Sharing. Sharing the most menial, inconsequential and mundane parts of their
lives with friends is commonplace. This is the content of their IMs, tweets and
Facebook status updates.
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10. Summary
It is evident that mobile marketing is a new and exciting marketing platform
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The future of mobile marketing is mind blowing, with augmented reality (AR) at
the top of the list – location-based search where your phone will know where you
are and will display ads and content based on your location. For now, one can only
speculate on what AR will do for mobile marketing and the mobile industry as a
whole, but it will undoubtedly be a game changer.
• Learned where mobile connectivity started and how it has grown rapidly in
South Africa.
• Learned about the risks and things to avoid when using mobile media for
marketing.
• Learned how Generation Z behaves and uses mobile devices, to enhance your
marketing plan.
11. References
1. History of mobile phones: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_mobile_phones
3. Africa’s high mobile penetration sets the stage for internet revolution: www.
itnewsafrica.com/?p=2839
4. South Africa mobile penetration levels break the 100% mark: www.itu.int/
ITU-D/ict/newslog/South+Africa+Mobile+Penetration+Level+Breaks+The+1
00+Mark.aspx
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business-promotion-strategy-1011349.html
Campaign&id=3831231
9. Proximity marketing delivers the right ads at the right time: www.bluetooth.
com/English/Products/Pages/Proximity_Marketing_Delivers.aspx
16. Studying the digital future: A new set of rules for mobile marketing: www.
mobiadnews.com/?p=3703
17. Digital will overtake traditional media spend by 2014 study: www.
themediamanager.com/3/post/2010/8/digital-will-overtake-traditional-
media-spending-by-2014-study.html
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CHAPTER 10
INTERNET MARKETING
STRATEGY
Key concepts
CHAPTER 10:
InTERnET mARkETing
sTRATEgy
1. Introduction
During this course, you have learned about many useful, effective and exciting
marketing strategies. This final chapter is all about putting them together into a
coherent whole – to get the maximum benefit out of your effort, time and money.
You will also learn how to further your education by keeping up with emerging
internet marketing trends.
• Learn the best techniques for creating an integrated and effective internet
marketing strategy (section 3).
• See how to start with the basics and expand your online campaign (section
3).
• Get tools and resources for continuing your internet marketing education in
the ever-changing online world (section 4).
2. Holistic approach
A single internet marketing tool on its own is never as effective as a well-planned
campaign. Unlike most of traditional marketing, where an advert or promotion will
expire after a certain amount of time, internet marketing is all about long-term,
ongoing projects. A website and social community requires more planning and will
remain active much longer than a traditional marketing campaign. At the same
time, internet marketing also includes one-off projects like online adverts and
promotional content. This means that internet marketing requires a unique and
distinct approach.
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As you learned in chapter 2, your website is the centre of your internet marketing
strategy, because it is your home on the web and the first place that your
customers will look for you – and also because it is the space that you can control
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and analyse most completely. Your goal it to link all your marketing strategies to
your website, so that anyone who encounters your branding will end up in the
same place: your optimised, tailored and monitored company website.
Here’s an image from chapter 2 that shows just some of these relationships:
4. Measurement – tracking and analysing user data so that you can improve
your page
Often, one tool or avenue can have repercussions for more than one marketing
platform – especially copywriting and social media. The ideal holistic internet
marketing approach capitalises on the key features and strengths of each individual
element – the more you use, the greater the combined effect. For example:
• PPC and other types of advertising are ideal for driving interested customers
to your website.
• Excellent web design makes the user experience enjoyable, which can assist
in conversions.
• Good web copywriting and blogging will encourage visitors to stay on your
web page, and to return for new content. They also play a big factor in
converting your visitors into customers.
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• Social media builds a community that either refers back to, or is located on,
your website, meaning that participants are constantly and subtly exposed
to your marketing message.
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• Web analytics lets you measure, analyse and refine your strategy, making you
more effective with less effort.
However, keep in mind that you should not necessarily use all of these tactics at
once, since you many not have the resources to run them effectively or they may
simply not be appropriate to your business and goals.
Helen is a homeowner who is looking for a good gardening service for her
large garden. She searches Google for “landscaping and gardening cape
town” and finds your website, www.alphagardening.co.za, in one of the
sponsored adverts at the top of the page. She clicks on it and spends some
time browsing your page. Helen is especially drawn in by your blog, which
provides regular, seasonal gardening tips; therefore, she enters her email
address to sign up for the weekly email newsletter.
She also notices that you have a Facebook Page and clicks the link on your
website to access it. There, she finds an active community of local gardeners,
each one passionate about their plants and full of questions and good
advice. Some of them even praise your business, saying that your service
is punctual, neat and thorough. Helen chats to your community members
about gardening issues and invites some of her friends to take part.
After a bit of socialising, Helen goes back to your website, reads through
the service offerings and submits a quote request by using your online form.
A few hours later, impressed by the promptness of your reply, she agrees
to sign up for your monthly gardening service. She is delighted to get an
SMS confirmation of the appointment, with a special discount because she
recommended your service to her friends – a fact that you noticed in your
web analytics data.
This scenario highlights just some of the ways that your marketing strategies can
overlap and support each other. On the outside, this crossover looks seamless –
from the perspective of the user, every part of the strategy is just one aspect of
the whole.
In module 2, we discussed the concept of the user experience, which is the way
that users perceive and interact with your website. Creating a holistic marketing
strategy means extending that user experience to other avenues, like your
email newsletter and social networks. This highlights the absolute importance of
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consistency and uniformity in your branding approach across all platforms. Your
customers should never have the jarring experience of questioning the identity of
one of your branded communications: it should all feel like branches on the same
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tree.
• Think about all the potential risks and problems that could affect your
campaign. Delayed web development? Negative PR about your brand online?
Develop a strategy for handling each problem if it were to come up, or think
of ways that you can prevent the problem from arising at all.
• Make sure that you comply with the new Consumer Protection Act, which
protects the consumer from unsolicited communication. Read through the
CPA primer and the accompanying Act carefully to make sure that you are
not breaking any laws. If you follow ethical marketing practices and consider
how your marketing messages will affect the end consumer, you should be
fine.
• Create a realistic schedule and timeline for each part of the project – and
don’t forget to include ongoing activities like monitoring and moderating. At
the same time, allocate a budget to each project task and work out your total
budget at the end.
• Build the team that is going to help you create your strategy – find the
freelancers, staff members or colleagues who will be working on the project
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and include them in the planning process. If you are working on your own,
consider finding some just-in-case contacts if you find yourself stuck or too
busy. Make sure that you communicate frequently and effectively with your
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team.
• Get to work! Measure your progress through the project by crossing off tasks
when they are complete and amending schedules and budgets as necessary.
Your plan will probably have to change a few times in this process, but that
is all right as long as you make the necessary adjustments.
However, it is unlikely that you will get an exceptional one completely for free; to
create something truly professional, you will need the assistance of experts and
the features available on the more advanced paid-for web tools. You will also have
running costs like PPC budgets, domain registration fees and server costs. Factor
all of these in, decide how much you are willing to spend and then find the best
ways to maximise your budget. Don’t spend R20,000 on an overly sophisticated
website when you can spend your money better on subscriptions to analytics and
email services.
Time is also an important consideration. First, you will spend a lot of time upfront
planning, building and filling your platforms with the right content. Second, you
will spend time every day monitoring, engaging and adding to your platforms.
Most marketers and entrepreneurs who run straightforward internet marketing
campaigns spend at least two to three hours a day on responding to feedback,
monitoring social media discussions, reading up on mentions of the brand, creating
new content and analysing tracking data on the fly. This is a considerable time
commitment, but extremely valuable if you optimise what you do. It is also a good
caution against trying to do too many things at once.
1. Your website. As discussed in chapter 2, your website is the centre and the
most vital component of your online marketing strategy. It is the online hub
that you control and that your customers will gravitate to. Your website
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succeed if you do not track and analyse the effect of its strategies. Data, and
the information you can glean from it, are essential.
These two elements are vital, but they will not succeed in isolation. In addition,
you need to include at least one traffic-generating strategy. The following two are
the most effective.
Finally, there are several extra tools you can add once your campaign is running
and you feel you have the capacity to expand.
1. A blog. Blogs are a great way of improving your SEO and of providing
interesting content that will make your visitors return to your website.
2. Social networks. If you choose, you can place your brand on a social network
like Facebook or LinkedIn. Be careful which platforms you choose – think of
what is most appropriate for your target market.
• Free versus paid. There are many free online tools and services that you can
use in your marketing campaign; there are also many inexpensive paid services
that give added value and better features. Choosing which to use depends
on your budget, technical skill and what you want to achieve with your brand.
For example, consider your website. If your page is small, purely informational
and very simple, you can use one of the free website builders introduced in
chapter 2. However, if you want more control, a more professional image and
better possibilities for optimising your page, invest in a properly developed
website.
• Social networks. Social networks come in many guises and there are dozens
available online. Many marketers see social networking as a buzz concept
that they feel compelled to employ, but there are risks involved too. Not
every brand is suited to every social network, and not all brands have target
markets that use these networks. Before you sign up and devote time to
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social networking, research your market carefully to make sure they are using
the tools you want to reach them on.
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• Make sure your server is reliable. Your server is the computer that your
website is saved on so that it can be assessed online. Your hosting service is
responsible for storing your website on their servers and for making sure it is
always available. If you find your website is down often, speak to your hosting
service or change to a more reliable service provider.
• Make backups. If you have ever had your computer hard drive crash, then you
know the value of good and frequent backups – copies of your data that are
stored in a different place to the originals. Your website is also at risk of being
changed or deleted if the server it is on is damaged. Therefore, you should
have – or your host should make – regular website backups.
• Consider data limits. Most people in South Africa have a limited amount of
bandwidth that they can use each month – this is the amount of internet data
that they can load on their computers, including websites. It is important that
your page has as small a file size as possible (which will also give it a better
SEO ranking). Don’t use large, high-resolution images, complex animations,
embedded music or videos that load automatically.
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Published media – blogs and email newsletters – are less intensive but must still
be updated regularly according to a preset schedule. Evaluate the amount of
time you have and plan your publishing around it. It is much better to publish less
frequently but regularly than to fail to stick to an overly ambitious schedule. Also
consider how much time your audience has to read all your content – don’t waste
time blogging three times a day if they’re only checking in once a week. One or
two blog posts a week is manageable for most marketers (unless you have an
in-house copywriter or outsource the service), and an email newsletter shouldn’t
be sent more often than fortnightly or, better, monthly. You don’t want to strain
yourself or overload your customers.
More static content, like your website, can be modified as needed, though remember
to keep your SEO up to date. If you do add new website content, perform ad hoc
keyword research and optimise the text and meta-data for keywords when you
include it on your site. If you have submitted your details to online directories,
check them every so often to make sure that the details are still correct. Your
online adverts should be adapted as frequently as necessary to make sure they
are performing at their peak – this could be once a day, or every few months
(depending on the nature of your business and the maturity of your campaign).
Keep in mind that content online behaves in two seemingly contradictory ways.
On one hand, current content quickly becomes replaced by the never-ending wave
of newer material. On the other, anything posted to the web will be around for
a long time, saved on servers and caches around the world – and completely
deleting something is impossible. Whenever you post any content, ask yourself
if you are comfortable with it being seen by many people and available for a long
time. This is a vital consideration for your online reputation management.
As you learned in chapter 8, analysing your analytics data means more than just
adding up the numbers. You must really try to understand why visitors behave
in certain ways. Why are more people on Facebook in the morning than at any
other time of the day? Why does your blog get the most comments at 1pm? Why
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does no one click on your search engine advert even though there are several
impressions every day? Try to come up with logical answers and a new plan, or
consider doing some direct research by approaching customers to discuss this.
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Then implement it and see what effects, if any, the changes have.
In the first three months, you should keep a close eye on your analytics data,
especially as you are adding and changing many things at once – you should be
checking your analytics programs once or twice a week. Later on, when your
strategies are established, you can reduce this to a few times a month.
• Put your web address on everything. Decide which is your most prominent
online touch point – generally your website or social networking profile – and
add that URL to everything you publish or advertise. You can put the URL into
print and TV adverts, on your packaging, on leaflets and billboards – wherever
people will see it.
• Incentivise the website. Include a special code on your printed media that
allows visitors to your website to get bonus content or a special discount.
Announce a competition that is web based only. This will drive people to visit
your web platforms and will help with tracking too.
• Double up your content. Post you TV advert on your website. Upload your
flier as an image. Present your radio advert as streaming audio. Once you
have created any of these offline media, you can use your website to host
and promote them so that they are always available for viewing. If you make
a particularly funny advert and your customers actually want to share it, this
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• Open up the discussion. Use your offline media to promote the interactive
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elements of your online tools. Let users submit their own comments, media
and questions – and make sure you respond effectively. Cell C is doing this
with their “Tell Trevor” (www.telltrevor.co.za) campaign.
• Use online to promote offline. Use your online platforms to let your followers
know about offline events, deals and promotions.
• Use your online lessons. Take the lessons you have learned from successful
online strategies (which can be precisely measured and analysed) and
incorporate them into your offline advertising to make it that much more
effective.
• MXit: a South African cellphone messaging application that has taken the
youth market by storm
• Woolworths: the retailer has a strong social media presence on Twitter (twitter.
com/woolworths_sa) and Facebook (www.facebook.com/WoolworthsSA)
In addition to traditional offline companies moving into the online space, a number
of online-only South African companies are achieving success too:
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tools
The best way to succeed at internet marketing in South Africa is to watch these
players, study their moves and learn from their successes and failures. You need
to recognise the uniqueness of the local online space and capitalise on its qualities.
• The semantic web. As you learned in chapter 1, web 3.0, or the semantic
web, is about creating information that is human-readable rather than just
machine-readable. Internet marketing will have to mirror this trend to make
sure that its content is easily found and organised by people rather than just
search engines and online aggregators.
• New tools and networks. Every day, new online tools and places appear –
many fail, but some survive and start to grow significantly. The landscape is
bound to change significantly. For example, Twitter was virtually unknown in
2007, but today is one of the top social networks; in five years, it may be
obsolete already. By the time you read these notes, a new network called
Diaspora will have been launched – it is billed as the Facebook alternative for
those who want a more secure, customisable social network. What effect has
it had already?
• Applications. Since the launch of iTunes’ App Store, online applications – little
programs that perform a specific function – have taken the web by storm.
Virtually all mobile and desktop devices can run a huge selection of apps –
everything from checking the weather and stock markets to playing games
and performing analytics. Will you develop a unique app for your brand – a
store locator for your franchise, a fun game for your law firm, an interactive
menu for your restaurant?
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voice, but they are starting to see through techniques like advert placements
and SEO. How will you speak to this savvy, expert and cynical audience?
CHAPTER 10
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• Learned how to make all the parts of your internet marketing strategy work
together.
• Learned how to take your strategy from the bare basics and expand it to
include many diverse elements.
• Were shown the tools for continuing your own internet marketing education.
6. References
1. Advice on holistic web marketing: www.flyte.biz/resources/
newsletters/07/03-holistic-web-marketing.php
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